Happy Belated St. Paddy's Day from Peru!

Not this past week but the weekend before, my friend Emma had a birthday party that was coupled with a St. Paddy's Day gathering. It was really fun and my Cusqueña gringa girlfriends accompanied me as well as Mia who lives with Julie. We had a great time chatting and meeting people. Julie made some connections for singing with Internations and Eimer showed off her Irish dancing skills. She taught me a few things as well. She also explained to me that St. Patrick was a guy who was a shepherd and then found God and the holy trinity in the 3 leaf clover and then proceeded to evangelize. I am not sure if that is the true story or not but it sounded pretty good to me.

Addie's first day in Lima and livin it up!

I love gatherings with expats. This party had Peruvians as well. It was a mix of Emma's yoga friends, internations people and women with wine. I always meet interesting people at these types of events. People come from all over the world to Peru.

Me and the birthday girl!

We ate a lot of meat and there was plenty of beer and alcohol to go around. It was a Sunday afternoon though so I wasn't trying to party too hard. I want nothing to do with hangovers when it comes to work. No thank you!

The party went really well except for the fact that someone either threw or knocked a bottle off of the 21st floor terrace and it smashed the front windshield of a car of a tenant. Eimer, the lovely host, is being taken to court for it. That is not cool at all and maybe there should be more panels so this kind of thing doesn't happen. The terrace is meant for people to have BBQs and with those comes drinking either out of cans or bottles. I think the car owner's insurance should cover the accident but I am positive it doesn't. Car insurance here is a complete joke.

This part of the terrace has glass windows with no roof. This is a view of Miraflores by the way.

Other than that, things are moving right along. I have started lessons again with one of my students form last year and I have a potential 4 year old student coming to observe my Wednesday class. If I get three students who are 3 or 4 years old I will start group lessons on Saturday. That would be fantastic and it is so crucial for the students to play with each other and learn from one another.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Monday!

Happy Monday!

I promise I am still alive. I have just been a little busy as last week was my first full week of school and this weekend was full of social events. My friend Addie is staying with us right now while she gets her carnet stuff taken care of and I have been entertaining her so blogging hasn't been the top priority. I also started the violin workshop I will be teaching this semester at school today. I have lots on my plate but I am super motivated and feeling so grateful for all the work and activities I have going on right now.

I hope you have a wonderful Monday night!

Let the Classes Begin

What a tiring but satisfying day! I had my first class with all the kinder classes and they got better each time I executed the class. My last few classes are going to be the most productive because I will have perfected my routine after performing for the first three classes.

I realized that I didn't plan enough so I went onto things that we were going to start tomorrow. I started asking them what feelings I was feeling by showing them different faces. It was a good way to gauge if they knew the feelings yet and most of them did which was great. Kinder C has the most fluent English speakers and Kinder E has the most resistant. They all kept asking me why I couldn't explain things to them in Spanish and if I could speak Spanish. I told them all that I understand Spanish but I don't speak it.

Hehe. I am not going to speak to any of the girls in Spanish. They will always get English responses from me. This includes my first grade class that I will be watching during lunch time on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I think everyone will benefit from it. Hopefully, the girls will start asking me questions in English too. The goal is to get them speaking in complete sentences and to work on pronunciation. I think I can do a good job on eliciting better pronunciation but unfortunately, the English that the girls will be getting from the rest of their teachers as they go through elementary school will have an accent of sorts. That is not to say the girls won't learn English or learn how to speak well. Actually, the English pronunciation skills they get at the pre-kinder and kinder levels will ultimately help them later on. It becomes increasingly more difficult for kids to pick up dialects after the age of 6 years old. I will do my part as best as I can!

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I just had a quick interruption from my step-son. He is living with us this year and he just started school as well. He had some homework and I helped him print out a picture of the parts of the skin. I will be serving as homework helper this year since Marco works late. It's fine by me and it will give me good practice for when I have adolescents of my own down the road. I am set on him learning English and I have started asking questions and responding to him in English and he got frustrated but I am determined. The more you hear it and have to deal with it on a daily basis, the easier it becomes. It is just a matter of patience. I am planning on doing the same for Marco. Neither one is going to get off the hook! I won't speak Spanish at work with the girls and I would like to speak less at home. I will get plenty of Spanish speaking time every where else. Wish me luck on this endeavor!