Teaching My First Class

Today, I taught my first health education course with Julia on nutrition and hygiene to kindergartners in Spanish. I have much work to do to improve both my Spanish as well as the quality of the class. The kids got bored easily and I had a hard time keeping their attention. Julia and I will revamp the course for tomorrow.

We started by holding out cards with different foods and explaining why they were good, but I think I gave them too much information. We then passed out the cards and asked the kids to identify which were good and which were bad foods. After that, we read a story about a girl who is so dirty she becomes sick. We taught on the importance of hygiene and how best to stay healthy. Ingrid taped some of the class for us, but I´ve decided against posting the first version because I have much to improve. Sadly, I only have 3 days of teaching to do since I plan to finally leave Xela this week. I could easily just never leave this city, but alas, I need to see the rest of Guatemala before I leave. Either Friday or Saturday, I will then go solo around the country. My brother, Jeff, and his Guatemalan friends really want me to buy a machete for when I go solo, but I think I might hurt myself if I do. I wish I had brought pepper spray and I will have to pick up some when I pass through the States for a week at the end of July. My tentative schedule is to head to Antigua, to Coban to see Semuc Champey, Tikal, possibly pass through Belize, then to Livingston and Rio Dulce and to Copan Ruins if I have time and out of Guate and onto LA for a couple days and to SF for a couple of days before heading to China.

Thankfully, my care package from Don finally arrived. He sent chewable multi vitamins so that I won´t die of choking as well as much needed chocolate chip cookies and chocolate chips so that I can make my own cookies. I probably didn´t need more sweets, but I definitely have a sweet tooth. I went to the Mennonite run Bake shop for the last time today. I have gained 10 lbs here from eating all the crazy sweets and I look forward to having to scavenge for food on the road so that I can shed some of these pounds.