This has been a really busy week. For the first time, I felt swamped with work. To top it all off, (besides the fact that the Pats lost), I was sick on Tuesday. Intense aches, along with a fever at one point. I was really nervous that it would turn into something miserable, but luckily I slept it off and was fine on Wednesday! Figures that I haven't had a cold in two years, but get sick in Italy. Oh well, dodged a major sickness bullet!
Early Monday morning, I had my first day of my internship with my second class. These kids are fourth year students (17-18 years old). I guess I shouldn't call them "kids" since some of them are less than two years younger than me. Anyway, it is a much smaller class than my class with Lucia. This class also seemed slightly less enthusiastic initially than my younger class. When I first walked in, they made me nervous (not going to lie here!) However, it's amazing how things change when you connect with people more personally. As soon as I was helping pairs of students practice for their English proficiency exam (a big test they have coming up), they were asking me all sorts of questions and telling me stories! I think that in this culture, "reserved" and shy sometimes comes of as standoff-ish even when the students are actually nice. I left feeling like I had really helped them practice, and they were feeling a lot more comfortable by the end of the lesson.
Tuesday, I was back with Lucia's class! I really love these kids. I had organized a lesson around "education vocabulary." Essentially, Lucia wanted me to expose the kids to some "slang" words in America related to education. For example, one of the words I taught the kids was "cramming." (We've all done some of that at some point!) There is no word in Italian for "cramming" for a test. The kids were adorable when they heard the word; they thought it was the coolest thing ever! They then started using it in conversation, which was funny. At the end, I introduced Pictionary (which they also hadn't heard of) for our new words! Each team had to draw a picture of the vocab word, and their team had to guess the word. By the end, they were cheering and were so into it! A few students even stayed after to ask me more questions about the words and life in general. I noticed a huge difference between this week and last week in their comfort levels around me. They seemed way less nervous when trying to practice their English this week. Several of them have already asked me if I'm on Facebook! Some things are just universal. I think I have a lot of "friends" in my future...
Stay tuned for tomorrow's post...I'll have a special story to tell about an Italian family I'll be spending a lot of time with. :)
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