growing up

   Today I became a teacher.

   And coach.

   And it was weird.

   In the past year when I was thinking about what I would be doing, neither of those ever occurred to me.

   My first day here, they told me I would be helping a volunteer (Monica), who is fluent, to teach her English class at the school. When I heard that, I was like oh great, this is gonna turn out awesome. The first couple days I just sat to the side and watched the kids do their work, and answer the questions that Monica asked them.

   Today was different.

  Mondays are math days. Which means that the older ones do math problems, but they are written out in English, and they have to give the answer in English. It’s a way to teach them what they need, and aren’t getting very much of the rest of the time.

   So I wrote some problems on the board. No big deal. Right?

   NOPEEE.

   Monica was grading things and checking their notebooks, so she sent all of the kids with questions to me. Good thing I know how to say 353 in Spanish. Cause the majority of them had no clue what they were doing, or they just wrote down some other numbers and pretended that that was the right problem, because they didn’t understand what I wrote on the board. Oh my….

The other issue was that the types of problems they were doing, were long division and multiplication. Like I remember that. AND I had to check EVERY problem on EVERYONE’S work.

   Lets just say that it took awhile, but I can now say that I am smarter than the average Honduran fifth grader, at least in the math category.

   So then there’s the whole coaching thing.

   One of the volunteers wanted to have a soccer practice two days a week after another program.

   All of the volunteers know that I played soccer and that my dad coaches soccer.

   So today, two hours before the practice was suppose to start, he asked me if I wanted to help, and if I had any ideas.

   There was only one problem.

I grew up where there was grass.

And an innumerable amount of balls.

And everyone spoke the same language.

   Yeah…. not here. It was interesting to work with 30ish kids, of all ages, on concrete with four balls.

   They don’t know how to pass or trap. They just kick it with whatever part of their foot they feel like. And trying to make them do drills was interesting, cause they only wanted to play.

   Even though it was interesting, it was a fun thing to be apart of, and I can’t wait to see how this new thing will turn out.