For example, when I unlock my classroom in the morning, it's usually the temperature of a well-kept sauna. The air is heavy and the windows are fogged up. When I stepped into my classroom yesterday, it was pleasantly warm, but not so warm that I expected to see wooden benches and sweaty people in towels. I opened the windows and a chilly breeze swept in. I welcome this cold front, because the first few months here were sweltering, mostly because the classrooms were designed to keep the air in (for when the high school gets air conditioning in 2016). Plus, we do not have classroom fans yet. Of course, my students complained of the cold, but I told them that they will concentrate better this way. I made that up.
Speaking of concentration, my students took my exam yesterday. Weirdly enough, the worst section for them so far has been the vocabulary section. I have 15 fill-in-the-blank vocabulary words and many students are getting 8-12 of them wrong:
Read the following lines out loud to yourself like everything you read is completely normal. The boldfaced words are the words my students put in the blanks.
"When the shocked little girl saw the Christmas presents under the tree, all she could do was stand there and peppered."
"She was given a gentle gape from her father after jumping in the lake without a life jacket."
"She was walking around dressed like Winnie the Pooh. What a weird augment!"
"When Jim received the news, it didn't affect him at all. His face was gape."
"His hair is always messy and his clothes are wrinkled. He always looks gibe."
"The teacher is so stern and augment; she never lets me turn in late work."
"After my career was taken from me, I felt insidious of a life."
How creepy would it be to receive a "gentle gape" from anyone, let alone your father?
Curiouser and curiouser. Well, I've graded about four pages of 40 exams out of 80 eight-page exams. Not sure how that figures. One-fourth of my exams are done? This is why I don't teach math.
I will leave you today with some pictures of a football game in Santa Lucia from a few weeks ago. Some of us teachers were walking the winding, cobblestone way to the bus after a get-together, when we came upon this soccer game. I managed to snap a few photos.
It gets pretty foggy in the mountains. Can you imagine playing soccer in this cloud?
On a side-note, Last night I experienced "Skyfall," the new James Bond movie, at an IMAX theater. It was excellent! The theater is located at the brand-spanking-new City Mall in Tegus. This mall is so modern, it has a large, below-ground parking garage which has a green and red light over each parking space. When one is searching for a parking spot, simply look for the green lights and avoid the red lights (those spaces are filled). AND the president of Honduras funded the whole thing, or so I'm told.
Today and tomorrow, I plan on grading, snacking, napping, and working on my NaNoWriMo novel. Every November, thousands of people around the world strive to write 50,000 words of a novel. I'm about 4,286 words in.
Wish me luck. :)
All my best and a thousand hugs from Honduras,
Julie
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