What a week....

First week back in Otavalo and at school after the holiday break has been a bit strange.  On Monday, a new Tracey & a new "intern" accompanied me to school.  The new intern, Julia, is actually not here to intern, but to work on her research for her thesis on volunteer teachers in second languages (or something to this effect).  She has been a volunteer at one or two other GVI projects and was a project manager as well.  She is now working on her masters of artsin international studies.  Anyway, they came up to observe and parents started showing up.  Tracey didn't realize it, but the parents thought they had a meeting with her regarding the potential stove building in the community.  They ended up meeting until at least 11am, when Tracey finally broke free to go to the other school as she had planned.  I have to admit though, it was a bit un-nerving to have someone observing me on the first day back at school after not speaking spanish for 12 days and not really having much prepared! 

Shortly after arriving at school on Tuesday, I started not feeling well, and had to make a number of runs to the bathroom in the first hour.  Fearing this was a flu, I left the classroom and spent the rest of the school day in the van, sleeping and making occasional runs back down to the school bathroom!  I ended up staying home all day Wednesday as well, with naseau, headache and joint aches. 

Yesterday, I made it back to school, although I was feeling a bit weak.  Lunch was not appealing, but I ate in the after noon when we got back into Otavalo and I started feeling much better.  My school day was pretty lax as I had not had not been able to plan anything.

So finally today was a great day.  The teacher was not at school, so Julia came with me to help me teach.  We actually had time to plan onThursday night and had a number of good, interactive activities for all the kids.  Only 9 kids were in school, as they knew the teacher would not be there.  We had a lot of fun doing a Bingo game with country names and then finding the countries on the globes and identifying which continents they are on....ok, when I say "we", I mean Julia!  She was great and really took the lesson further then we had intended when she saw the kids did not know this information at all.  After, we had a lot of fun making and decorating masks before lunch.  After lunch we did English and then had PE, so it was a funfilled day.