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Hey there family and friends,
What´s everyone back home been up to? We are so glad that it´s finally the weekend- it´s actually a 3 day weekend for us, we have Monday off. We really need it too because we have to work on our mid-term grades. I was working on some all morning and then decided to take a break before I drive myself crazy. We have to give the parents report cards for mid-term and we have to write comments too, so it takes a while. It´s good though because I´m hoping that when the parents of some of my problem students see the bad grades their getting, they´ll get on their kids cases to try harder and be more respectful. We´ll see. Most of the kids are doing ok, but there are a few slacker teenagers that either hardly ever show up to class, or when they do, they just ignore me and talk in spanish the whole time. That´s when this job is a huge challenge. I had a crazy issue yesterday in class with one of my students named Paco. He´s 14 and he´s actually my boss´s kid. Anyway, he´s the worst kid that I have out of all my classes, and yesterday he just was not listening to me at all. He got this major attitude with me, and started to pretend like he was going to hit me! Like, he would stand up for no reason and walk around the room, and when I asked him to sit down (nicely at first with a please, then shouting) he started making this gesture like he was going to attack me! I was pretty shook up- he´s a big kid. So, of course, I had to send him out of my room out to his mom. Situations like that are so hard because when I´m frustrated and angry like that, I have a hard time explaining to my boss in spanish what happened. Anyway, we are definately looking forward to this semester being over. I don´t think I told you guys, we´re transferring to another school for the next semester! It´s part of the same chain (Culturalingua), but it´s in a bigger city and the boss there is bilingual. That should help a lot. And also our spanish teacher that we´ll have there is completely bilingaul. (In our current situation, our spanish teacher knows hardly any english, so when we just don´t understand something, she has difficulty explaining things to us). So, we´ll come home for Christmas, then return to this town to finish out the semester (which goes until the end of January) and then move to our new town (called Sahuayo) the first week in February. It will be a nice change and a chance to start again fresh. We actually visited the town last weekend and stayed with the teachers there and were so impressed by the apartment we´ll be living in. It´s so new and clean, and seems to have a lot less cockroaches than our current house=) Definately a major plus! We also love the town. It´s a lot bigger than Los Reyes and it has a new movie theatre and a McDonalds!!!! It´s going to be great. Well, I guess that´s about it. Besides the few trying situations at work, we´re still enjoying our time here and we think (we hope) we´re still learning a lot. Jason ( our roommate) is kind of dating one of his students, so I think we´re going out on a double date tonight. She´s 20 and is in his most basic class- hardly speaks a word of english. But that´s good because then it forces us to practice out spanish. I thought it was kind of interesting that the school doesn´t really have any sort of policy against dating a student. I guess in his case it´s ok since she´s older. That is another thing that we´ve really noticed here though- all the young girls with babies! Seriously, it is completely normal and common for 16, 17 year old girls to be married with 2 kids already! It´s very interesting. My students always ask me why Adam and I haven´t had any kids yet- since in this country it´s very unusual to be our age with no kids. I just explain to them that I want kids, but have to wait a few years until Adam finishes school first. Well, gotta run, time to go grocery shopping. Love you all!! -Sarah
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