Then as the week drew on, we taught our lessons at the elementary school, quickly learning that we had to be very realistic about how much we can actually get done with our kids in an hour, as well as assisting in the classes at the teacher's college. We also went to visit a private, catholic high school, so we are really getting a taste of everything in the education system here.
Our biggest surprise though came on Thursday, when we went to the elementary school like we have every day, and were introduced to the 'new' English teacher! It seemed like no one really knew she was coming, including her... she has been retired for 5 years, so I think it was a pretty drastic change for her to be called out of retirement to this school all of a sudden. She said she was given no information, so for the past two days we've been trying to fill her in on who we are, what we've been doing, and thinking about how we are going to negotiate our role at the school from here on out. Because she has been retired, she comes from a different generation of thought about teaching than the perspective/approach that we are coming from, so we will have to delicately approach the coming weeks as far as how we will continue with some of our projects in the classes and collaborate with her in our efforts. I know we have the full support of the school still, all the teachers and the director have been nothing but supportive and totally behind us in our work there, so I'm sure it will work out in the end. The upside is that now we will have a lot more time to work with the younger grades, and we can hopefully begin to work on some lessons and projects with them. I think we were just a little thrown off by how suddenly things changed, after working so hard to plan lessons these past couple of weeks.
On Thursday night, we hung out with our friend Yosanna at our apartment, drinking mate (which she drinks sweet, unlike most Uruguayans), playing Mad Libs, and just catching up, since we hadn't seen her in a while. Hopefully tonight we will go out with her again, since we didn't go last night. People go out so late here... I find it really, really difficult to get myself to do that and to keep up with that lifestyle. I'll intend to nap beforehand, but my body just thinks it's bedtime, and doesn't want to rouse itself again! After being so sick though, I think I'm doing reasonably well with our schedule which includes many early mornings and a lot of walking.
Today I also was able to sit down and talk with a social worker from here in Paysandu. She is the daughter of one of the professors we work with, probably about a few years older than me, but still pretty young. She works at an agency that works with young children under the umbrella 'CAIF' as well as at a military base, and primarily does family work. It was very interesting to talk to her about the system here and the approach to the work... it sounds so similar to what I've been doing and to the social work system in the U.S. Next week we set up a time for me to shadow her at work a bit, so I feel like I'm actually making some headway towards my other mission here besides working in the schools, which is finding out more about the social work system, especially services for women and surrounding domestic violence. Talking to her has been the most useful thing towards that goal so far, so I'm really interested to see what she does firsthand.
Tomorrow, we are supposed to go to another one of our mentor's houses (rather, her parent's house), an English elementary school teacher at the school I was supposed to go to. We are going to have a double celebration, since it was her birthday over Beer Week, AND, she just got a Fulbright to come to the U.S. next year! So exciting!
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