Another week, another fiesta...

It has been another busy week in Monterrey. Since I last updated this, we have had a full week of Orientation, a group dinner at our place, a salsa (the food not the dance) party, a big group dinner at Fiesta Tacos, and our week culminated in a pool party at the home of the Superintendent. Between all those social events (and more) we spent hours at school in meetings and ducking out to our classrooms whenever possible to try and put things in to order.

Beginning Tuesday of this past week, we had all the teaching staff of the school present for Orientation. Before that it had just been us newbies. It has been nice to have many more people around, and I can’t stop saying how supportive everyone has been. From helping us arrange for a cleaning lady to getting us info on internet and cable tv to just stopping in the hall to check how things are going (at school and personally) – it was been amazing.

I am beginning to feel more and more confident about the whole teaching aspect. This school definitely expects a lot of us – but they also seem to have all the supports in place to help us be successful. I will be teaching Second Grade with 7 other people. We also have a literacy coach for K-2 and each grade has a Resource teacher. We have people who do our photocopying and deliver any technology materials we need in our class. I could get used to this. ☺

Today (Saturday) I had a little bit of a sleep in after a late night at the pool party (followed by an after-party at a house known as ‘The Birdcage’). I them heading off to school (just around the corner) and spent a few hours at school fiddling with things in my classroom and reading some of the many books and packages I have been given this week. There were lots of people in school today, so it wasn’t all work. In the late afternoon Laurie (my roommate) and Libby (our across the hall neighbour) headed to the Sorianna (a food store) to pick up some groceries and cleaning supplies (our cleaning lady comes for the first tie on Tuesday!). One thing I am quickly learning one thing about being in a country that speaks a different language – things take a long time. It isn’t as simple as popping into the grocery store to pick up a few things. It takes a long time to find things when you can’t read all the signs. This afternoon I tried to prepare a rice salad (the same one from my Mexican fiesta). It should have been quite simple, but of course the instructions on the box were all in Spanish. Dictionary in hand, I figured it out.

We made it out of the Sorianna (and a few other stores) about 2 hours later, exhausted and starving. We stopped at an pizza place where we were welcomed by an Italian women. On our way out, someone called us over from across the restaurant (she heard us speaking English) and wanted to know if we were interested in teaching some adult English classes. It seems that people here are way more comfortable and willing to speak to strangers than I am used to in Canada. It is very nice.

Spanish lessons will be starting this week, so hopefully things will begin to get a little easier.

We have a long weekend coming up (September 15th) so we are starting to plan a trip. Oe of the PTA mom’s we met is a travel agent, so she is looking at some all-inclusive resorts for us to go to. A 3 day weekend at Puerta Vallerta sounds good to me.

We will be getting internet to our house, hopefully soon, so it will be a lot easier for me to be in touch with everyone. Apparently something good to use is “Skype” which lets you talk for free over the computer. I bought myself a microphone today, so hopefully soon I can try that out. If anyone knows anything about it, let me know!

Thank you for the emails. If I haven’t written back to you yet, I will, I promise!
Xoxo
Ginny