A Typical Day

So everyone keeps asking me what my day to day life is like. Rather than explain it a hundred times, I thought I'd make a post about it!

Every day, Bonnie and I wake up around 7:30 and start getting ready. We shower, get dressed, make our beds, and everything, and come down to breakfast around 8:15 or 8:30. We're changing it up though, because all this Mexican food has made us decide to make exercising a priority. So now we're going to do Zumba in the morning and everything else after. By the way, Zumba in Mexico is soooooo fun. I love it! Haha.

For breakfast we always have fruit, usually watermelon and cantaloupe, orange juice, and either bread or eggs or something. It's way good.

After breakfast, we either go to the school or lesson plan/do whatever until we have to go to the school. Walking to school, though, is a huge part of our day. We walk around 40 minutes to get there every day, the whole time getting cat-calls. It's pretty entertaining. Here are some pictures of what we see along the way!

This giant tree is our signal to turn right :)

Some nicely manicured trees. There are tons of these in the city. So pretty!

We have an Office Depot. That seems so funny to me.

Don't be fooled by the name. This is Wal-Mart! Everything inside says so.

Yep, just some common sites! And this is the school!

It's really big, but we only have the bottom floor. The two upper floors are for an English school as well, just not ILP.

And our yard. It's sooooo nice we love to just sit out there and have our meetings or whatever.

So  yeah, that's where I teach! And these are my kids!

My 4-6 class.

 From left to right, Andrea, Julian (who is actually in my 6-8 class but came early that day), Alan, Roberto (who is hiding), Jocelyn, Isis, Maria, Leah, Samy, and Leslie. This class usually isn't this big, but for some reason that day I had ten! It was crazy.

My 6-8 class!

I'm not gonna lie, I like this class a lot better than the 4-6 kids. They're crazy, but way more interactive, which makes it a lot easier to get them interested in what I'm doing. The 4-6 kids just stare at me all the time. From left to right, Ary, Fany, Jesus (Chucho), and Adrian.

So if you didn't already guess, I teach from 4-8 every night. From 4-5 I have that first class and I teach them just regular language arts stuff, then from 5-5:30 I switch over and teach Jen's kids either math or an activity, then from 5:30-6 I go back to my kids for the same, either math or an activity. Then those kids leave and the next bunch comes in and we do the whole thing again! Language arts from 6-7, math or an activity from 7-7:30, and then again from 7:30-8.

Teaching is really fun but definitely exhausting. I feel like I'm always planning lessons because my 4-6 and 6-8 kids are in different stages, so I have to plan ten elementary lessons, two math lessons, and three activities each week. Which may not seem like a lot... but it takes forever. I haven't yet been on time with my lesson plans. I love it though. I often feel like I'm not doing them any good because they're just crazy and don't really want to learn English, but at the end of the day I know it's for a good cause. It's really cool to see how well the method really works. My kids have been in the program for around four years and you can have a pretty decent conversation with them in English! It's cool.

So yeah! As soon as teaching is over, our host family takes us home, we eat dinner, spend some time together, and then go to bed! And start the whole process again the next day.

It has its challenges, but I love, love, love my life here. I wouldn't trade it for anything.