The New Zealand Group

I love my job, it's a lot of work but I love it. Right now I am working over 55 hours a week, 8am-10:00 pm, Monday-Thursday and on Fridays I come into plan lessons. But I don't mind all the work because I have so much fun and I learn as well. Of course, by the end of the week I am physically exhausted from creating activities, being energetic for each class as well as consistently translating for students. Sometimes I literally feel like a human Spanish/English dictionary as all day I hear, "how do you say avestruz in english?" "how do you say estoy agotada" or I hear the students talk in Spanish to eachother and I translate what they are saying and get them to use the English that I have just translated rather than the Spanish. For example, they will say "Me toca a mi!!" and I will say, "You mean you want to say, it's my turn" and try to get them to say that phrase, "it's my turn" rather than the what they have just said in Spanish.

I am teaching so much this month because there is a group of Uruguayan students who will be traveling to New Zealand in April and need a month of intensive English training before leaving. They are such a fun group! The boys hardly speak a lick of English and the two girls in the group are at an intermediate level. I have the boys for 2 hours of conversation class but how do you talk with someone who hardls speaks the language? So we end up playing games or I find creative ways to get them talking using the little that they know, and somehow, every class period we end up laughing so hard. The other day I was laughing so hard that tears began to fall down my face! Yesterday was wonderful as well because the weather is so nice right now that we decided to have class outside! The picture I've put up was taken in one of the bigger classrooms at the institute and is where I usually teach. I'm in the front surrounded by 7 of the 8 New Zealand kids and the other teacher who is also working with them is also in the picture, he's the tall, thin guy in the back, he's Irish and it's a blast listening to his accent!