Viviendo el sueño: Basketball, Calvin & caves, and an English class party

This was kind of a crazy week getting back into the routine of school, meetings, basketball, working out, ESL...and then a busy weekend too. On Friday morning our basketball team had a game against one of the huge public schools here in Catacamas (which reminds me, I never posted about our other basketball games in Tegus before Holy Week). Anyway, it was a lot of fun, and I got out of Friday morning classes! The school there is HUGE -- about the same number of kids as my high school (maybe more) and since the game was at their school, all of the other students were crowded around watching and screaming and yelling. It was nuts! It reminded me of games at my high school. So picture us being surrounded by everyone cheering for the other team...chanting "Dieciohco, dieciohco, dieciocho" (the name of their school) so I couldn't even hear myself yelling. The girls couldn't even hear the referee's whistle either. It was absolutely crazy. We beat them 19 to 3 -- it actually should have been by more because their team was pretty bad. But seeing as how we had no fans I guess I'll let it slide. I guess the team at the other school just started this year, so they don't really know what they're doing yet. Anyway, the games before Holy Week were really fun too -- we lost two and won one. The girls actually played better than I thought they would, though we lost real bad to Justin's school's team...to give ourselves an excuse, it was our third game and the girls were exhausted. Hopefully we'll come back motivated for SAG (the big competition) in a week and a half.
Then Friday afternoon the Calvin students came to visit! There are about 10 students this spring studying Spanish in Tegus (the same semester abroad I did), and they were coming to a town about 15 minutes from Catacamas to visit a health clinic on Friday. My old prof knew that I was teaching here, so she called me up and asked if they could stop by my school to visit. I said of course! So they arrived at about 2 Friday afternoon...just in time for my 7th grade class from 2-2:40 (it would be 7th grade). So I had been telling my 7th graders all week about this, that they needed to behave really well, etc., and when I went to go meet the Calvin students at the entrance to the school and look back at my room, all the 7th graders were crowded around the door spilling outside the class doing who knows what. I was like, "Oh great." Anyway, then I lead the students to the room and walk in, and, wonder of wonders, all the kids have their book open on their desks, dead silent (granted half of the books open weren't even their language books...they weren't fooling anyone). And the Calvin students walk in and my 7th graders all stand up and are like, "Good afternoon" in unison. Absolutely hilarious. They were ANGELS. It was great. So now all the Calvin students are impressed at how great the kids behave....yeah. So we ended up just playing an adverb game and I had the Calvin students help out the 7th graders...it worked out really well. Then I showed them around the school and talked to them for a while about what it was like to teach and live here. Finally, we went to visit the caves and out to dinner. All in all, it was a lot of fun, and great to see some of my Calvin classmates!
Saturday morning it was back to swim lessons (I feel like I hadn't been in forever!), which was great as always. And I'm going this afternoon -- thank goodness, because it is getting REALLY hot here again (and for some Marialouisa always makes hot soup on the hottest days...). When my dad and Jordan came I had them bring me some torpedoes for the pool, and the kids LOVE them. You should have seen them the first day I brought them and threw them in the pool!
Saturday afternoon I went back to the English class at the University because it was their last class and they were having a party. So they all brought in food (I brought the cookies of course), and we just ate and talked. It was pretty great, though I had to choke down a few churros with queso in the middle (sick!).
So now it's just one more week before the big SAG competition -- and we have about one block every day off for SAG practice (I'm in charge of the sudoku competition so I'm trying to get kids ready for that....Justin's in charge of sudoku for his school too....so we'll see how this goes...). And then to SAG for a week and then Rose is here to visit!
And here's some pics...