First Days at School

Jon:  It was raining like mad for at least 5 days straight!!  What's going on?!?   We are in Mexico, it isn't even the rainy season, and this???  So to make me feel better, I got around to sorting out the 103 photos Michelle took of our last sunset in PV, since we haven't seen a really nice one here yet. 
Last Sunset in PV

Anyway, we've now been at school for a couple of days.  It's funny going back to school, the course is not a mickey mouse course in any way, it is proving to be a busy, intensive, course, but we will learn a lot, and make great memories along the way.  There are 9 people in our class, 3 are native Mexicans, 4 are Americans, 1 Canadian (I wonder who) and 1 Aussie (hummmm).  Our instructor is named Rudolfo, and he is very funny :).  One of the things we learned about recently was the sound "Schwa" that we have in the English Language.  Schwa is not actually the sound, but the arbitrary name given to a sound that we have in the English language.  So there's your English lesson for the week.

Thursday I taught my first conversation class ... piece of cake!  Had a lot of fun.  Teaching can be quite rewarding when you have good students.  Some people are stressed out about standing up in front of a class, and, I say isn't that what you signed up to do?  We finally posted some pictures of our room, its quite roomy actually, we're living in style :).  Our little home here for the next 3 weeks or so.  To the left is a picture of the entrance to our bathroom :).  Technically we are in a "rooftop" room, but there isn't much to see from our rooftop other than concrete walls.

Friday both Michelle and I taught our first grammar classes.  Michelle did pretty awful actually, she only got 98%.   Ok actually, we both loved it!  It was awesome, a lot of fun, and the kids were very good.  Still teenagers, but very respectful.  I can see that if it continues like this, we will really enjoy ourselves.  We'll post a few pictures of our school as well in our latest little collection.  Hopefully this weekend we will get a chance to do some photo taking.  There is some very nice architecture here in the city.  It's a very cool city actually.  We can find everything we need here, and its very safe.  There's a very good police presence here, we seen them often on bikes and in vehicles.  Speaking of police. we saw a city bus almost t-bone a police truck!!  All the traffic was stopped to allow the ambulance and police truck through, and a bus was trying to run a yellow light and came to a screeching halt inches away from this truck!!!  That would have been messy, the truck would have been totalled!  Looking forward to the weekend though it will be a very busy one :).  Lots of homework.  But having a great time regardless!

Photos of our Posada and where we go to school!

Last night it seemed like we weren't supposed to fall asleep or something.  Sirens, alarms, honking like mad for some reason.  And some little moped buzzing around the block, sounding like a lawnmower on helium.  Then, there was what seemed to be a contest of people seeing who can ring the bell the most times in a minute (to be let into the hotel), I'm guessing the night manager is deaf.  So while lying in bed trying to fall asleep, I was doing some very deep reflection on some of the more pertinent matters in life ... do avocados grow on trees or bushes?  I've never bothered to learn that, I'm just happy to buy them from the supermarket.  I decided that since I didn't know, in my own little world, avocados were going to grow on avocado bushes.  As it turns out, according to Wikipedia (avocados) I'm wrong and avocados grow on trees.  I much prefer the idea of avocado bushes, but I guess I can't have everything I want.  I found it rather amusing to learn where the name avocado originated.  You can find it in that Wikipedia link :).  Michelle is frantically trying to finish an essay, so she won't be posting today, but I'm sure we'll have her back for the next time :).  Let's cheer her on ;).