Carnaval and Teaching

Yesterday was Carnaval, otherwise known as Mardi Gras. I'd heard alot about Carnaval, the parades, costumes, fairs, and how in Guatemala they have Cascarones which are eggs filled with Confetti, that the kids go around breaking on everyone's heads. So I was excited about seeing my first Carnaval and was talking about it at work. Until my supervisor looked at me with shock and started talking about how erotic it is, that it's really vulgar and there's alot of drinking. Oops. To be honest, I thought it was unfair, because while that may be true of countries like Brazil, it's completely different and very mild in Guatemala, which is obviously what I would have been referring to. Anyways, I went to Calvario in the afternoon to check out all the activities, and even had a cascaron cracked on my head. It's most lively at night but I didn't go back. They say it gets kinda crazy and that the older kids fill the eggs with random things like flour, or just use real eggs. Which would've been fine except they are also known to use grosser things like urine, and tend to target foreigners. No thanks.


So I survived my first day of teaching today (not including random improv lessons in English). I know bigger words in Spanish than 12 year old Guatemalans, wahoo... It went pretty well. Except for the part where I had to improv the second class. We (or apparently just I) had an understanding that I would teach Science on Wednesdays and Social Studies on Thursdays. As if I wasn't stressed out enough about teaching in Spanish, I had to wing a 30 minute class on Social Investigation. I had a great stall strategy... make them participate and get a discussion going. But they wouldn't speak, I had to drag every word out of them. Also, I somehow managed to go from teaching 3 lectures a week (1 in English), to being responsible for 4 entire classes including coming up with homework, tests, and giving them grades. And they gave away my English class, so it will all be in Spanish. And it went from being a 3 week commitment to 4 weeks (they had to cancel the week they were going to be studying agriculture). Wow, I guess it really didn't go all that well. I mean, it seemed like it did at the time. They like me, and I covered the material I was supposed to cover...