Day 9 - Classes in Full Swing

This morning I went to the bank before work to exchange a few American dollars for quetzales. Note to future self: the bank is very particular about the bills that they will exchange. They only exchanged about half of my money for me because my other bills were slightly wrinkly, stained, or otherwise unacceptable. Though the money changers in shops along the street will usually accept bills in slightly worse condition, the bank offers the best exchange rate of 7.6Q to $1, so I suppose for as long as I’m exchanging money it’s worth the line and the bill rejection.

After the adventure at the bank, right at nine o’clock, one of the sistemas, Paolo, and I also started computer classes with the preschoolers. We took three students at a time for fifteen minute sessions and introduced them to computers, keyboards, and mice. We showed them the program Paint and used that to hone their mouse skills. By the end of each session each student had gotten to draw a few pictures of cars, flowers, houses, or stars and hopefully understood how to click and hold. Paolo was invaluable; my Spanish is not quite where it needs to be yet. Those two hours of classes just flew by, and immediately following I had my second day of preschool science classes.

Day Two of STEM classes went quickly, and I think they’re going well! In this Pana preschool “densidad” is everyone’s new favorite word. This week’s Cartesian Diver lesson is definitely still a work in progress, but even changes made from yesterday to today noticeably improved the class. My fear that the students may have trouble understanding the lessons because they are in Spanish (not their native Kaqchikel or Quiche) has been mostly erased. As long as I stick with smaller words they seem to comprehend the Spanish pretty well. Better than I do in fact! I can tell that the students are itching to start actually building the experiments, but they have to wait until next week for that. Fingers crossed that it all goes well.

I think today may hold a trip to the market for some pots and pans. After two days in the apartment our kitchen is just asking to be used, and cooking will lower food expenses significantly. The apartment is truly wonderful, and after a certain unnamed roommate accidentally locked themselves out of their room, we discovered that our apartment is also exceptionally safe. New locks, barred windows, a very comforting line of defense from burglars…or ourselves. But our landlord Santiago returned the next morning with the keys, and we all lived happily ever after with new our standard procedures for not locking ourselves out.

Now off to the market! Pray that the office internet works tomorrow; the past two days it has been functioning at…less than ideal levels. Every day is something new!