Feb 2007

Yesterday marked the beginning of my internship at Miguel Leon, an orhanage near my home that serves fifty girls between the age of 6-18. I will tutor girls between the ages of 8-12 from 3:00-5:00 two-three days a week. I think I am going to love it! Although incredibly heart-breaking, I found my experience there already inspiring. I know little personal information about the girls with whom I work but they were eager to ask me questions about myself, play with my hair, hold my hand, paint my toenails. I will tutor them in math and English...fortunately I can manage elementary math.
They are so beautiful, so precious...
One devastating experience of yesterday's visit there occured while I was helping them complete an English assignment. They were to draw a picture of their family and name each member of their family. Furthermore, they were to construct sentences such as, "my mom has blonde hair", my dad has a beard", "my house is white"...clearly they had no point of reference, they were left feeling confused and frustrated. It was so heart-wrenching, how do you describe the notion of family when such a concept has been absent since birth?
On a lighter note, yesterday morning while walking to school, I was randomly stopped on the street and questioned by a man and his wife about the opportunity to tutor his 9-year-old daughter Vanessa in English. They know my host family relatively well and apparently heard me speaking English to one of my classmates. I agreed immediately, they seemed incredibly nice, they also have an older daughter and an infant son who might I add is ADORABLE! He asked if I could stop his house around 5:00 yesterday afternoon and I agreed, this gave me the opportunity to meet Vanessa, who is a charm...so polite, intelligent, and quiet yet eager to learn. I begin tutoring her today and will do so 3-4 times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and sometimes Sunday. I will be paid 3 dollars each session. I am really excited, I this will be a really cool opportunity to enhance my Spanish abilities...however, I wanted to throw out a question to those reading my blog. If you would like, send me teaching suggestions or effective dynamics for learning a new language...this especially goes for Matt, Ellie, Jane, B, and Dad and anyone else that would have some insight!
Lastly, I finally uploaded photos, I was thrilled as now you can actually visualize some of the things I have been sharing with you!
Enjoy and take care!