First Week of Teaching

It was a good week of teaching. My second teaching experience was better than the first. I was more relaxed but I still made some mistakes but I'll keep getting better. I'll teach two more times next week and two more the last week for a total of 6 times. It's really good experience. I've been impressed with the school.

We have a weekly evaluation with the teacher on Friday. Yesterday she had good things to say about me and said I was doing good. The only criticism she had of me was my critiques of my classmates. I'm kind of like Paula Abdul was on American Idol. I always find the positives and don't really say many negatives. I told her that is the way I've always been and it's tough for me to critique others. If that's my only negative as a teacher so far then I can live with that.

We have a big paper due Monday and I spent a couple of hours last night working on it and a couple of hours this morning. Our teacher said she will not give us a final grade on Monday. She'll show us our mistakes and allow us to correct. As long as I turn in something Monday I'll be fine but I want to do as much as I can and try to do it as well as I can.

I'm about to go to Copacabana beach and read my Kindle for a while and then come back tonight and work on it some more. I need to get out and enjoy the weather. It's in the low 80s and feels great. It's partly cloudy but it's just good to see some sun because it has rained so much since I've been here.

Tomorrow I'll visit the first church I visited during Carnaval that I couldn't understand. I looked at their website and it said they had translation in english. I'll ask someone about it as best as I can in portuguese. Last week I visited the church that is so far away. I left the apartment at 4 pm and got home around 10:40. Even though I like the fact that the pastor knows people at my church it would really be difficult to get involved with a church that is so far away.

It took about 1 hr 40 min to get there by bus and walking. The service lasted a couple of hours. I had to catch a bus and it took about 30 minutes of waiting before it showed up and then took over an hour to get back. It took me home but went past my apartment this time. I told the driver to stop at Flamengo and stood up to get off but he kept driving and said something in portuguese. I gave them a dirty look because I didn't know anything smartaleck to say in portuguese. I guess it's improvement because this time I only walked about 20 minutes to the apartment instead of 30 minutes like last night. No dark shadowy figures this time.

The people at school said most of the job openings are going to be on my current side of town and I have to live close to my job. I figure I need to find something much closer to me. I know God will lead me to the right church.

Prayer request: My Aunt June had a stroke on Thursday and has lost some movement on her right side. If you'll pray for a quick and speedy recovery it would be much appreciated.

1st Day of Teaching

I did my first of 6 teaching sessions today. I was a little nervous beforehand but not too bad. One of the instructors let me and other student go over our lesson plans yesterday and get feedback from him. For some reason I was so nervous and talking really fast like some kind of jittery squirrel. The other student that heard me yesterday said it was painful to watch. Not what I wanted to hear.

I just really focused in on some scriptures on God's peace and that He'll never leave me nor forsake me. I kept speaking those to myself today and it went well. I was a little nervous before the lesson but it went good. God is good!

After you teach, you have to critique yourself and then the other students critique you and then the teacher critiques. I was ready to be blasted but the comments weren't bad. I'll get better with practice. One guy said he counted "ya'll" 6 times. I guess I should teach them "fixin' to" next.

The students were really nice and friendly and told me I did a good job. I teach again on Thursday. I couldn't work on my lesson plan tonight because I had a lot of homework to do. It won't take long to do the lesson plan tomorrow. All is good as an english teacher in Rio so far.