June 24, 2014

Last night we had a huge thunderstorm.  I think some of the lighting strikes must have hit the backyard because of how loud they were.  We even lost power for a little bit.  It rained all night but stopped in time for us to get to class.  :-)

In class today we discussed immigration from a different viewpoint.  We looked at the immigrant children who spend many years in the US and then, for whatever reason, come back to Mexico.  These children tend to be Jr. High-High School age.  They can speak Spanish but do not know how to read or write in Spanish.  In addition, they don't know the culture here.  The teachers are unsure of how to work with these students so many times they are ignored.  Because of the teacher's attitude and the fact that the kids don't fit in, they tend to become bullied.  It is a very rough road for these children--they struggle in America and then they struggle in Mexico.

Many of the activities that we do in class have to do with articles that we read (in Spanish).  Brandi and I take turns reading out loud and then what we don't understand, the professor explains.  We also create dialogs regarding the issue we are studying for the day.  For example, today we were given a case study of an American father who speaks no Spanish and is married to a Peruvian woman.  They both have sons.  The son whose native language is Spanish is struggling in school.  We wrote a dialog, in Spanish, between the father and the son.  We had to include:  how the father could help; what the son struggled with; and how the father could help the son learn English.

My conversations with our host mom really help me to work on my Spanish.  Today I tried explaining what we learned.  It is SO frustrating having all these thoughts but not be able to voice them because of the language.  Maria (host mom) is very patient and tries her best to slow down or help me figure out what I am trying to say.  She and I spoke for 1 1/2 hours today over "cafe y posteles" or coffee and pastries.  My tenses may not be correct, or if I'm really stuck I pull out my translator on my phone, but we still manage to have lengthy conversations!  :-)

Lunch was at Subway, across the street.  We left just in time to avoid the next rain shower!