A week in the life...

   I have to tell you about our class project for my Education students, because it is already so much fun! Delaney and I have made many, many loaves of banana bread since we got here. Why not? Bananas are cheap and tasty, and the bread is easy to make. They make a variety here that is a bit more cake-y (in fact, they call it cake). So we came up with the idea of baking banana bread as an English learning lesson. The students were a little stunned (their last project was much more 'academic,' so they weren't sure I was serious), but they are really on board with the idea now. We divided the class into four teams (there are 18 students), and this week they picked names for their teams and created a team poster that's blank in middle for now. I love the team names they chose: The First, Bad Boys Blue, Star Girls, and Crazy Guys. This class is such a fun, creative group. Their four posters are very different, but all delightful. They are all on black backgrounds, one has all the names formed by punching holes in neon colored paper and gluing the 'holes' in the shapes of the letters, one has stars and glitter and ribbon (guess which team that poster is for?), one has brightly colored blobs of paper with fancy lettering on them glued strategically on the poster, and one has shaded chalk drawings of local tree varieties (very beautiful!) We rolled them all up carefully and stored them for later in the department office. Next week they will choose among four recipes -- CALLING ALL BAKERS: if you have a recipe you'd like for us to consider, please email it to me at jsdcornforth@gmail.com by Monday, September 16 at 10pm. One of the choices will be my recipe, but I would love to use yours for a couple of the others!! I am also hoping to get a local recipe for the banana-bread-like cake they make here.

   I will keep you posted here as our project progresses. Baking Day is currently scheduled for October 9, and there will be a Taste Test starring some of the other staff/faculty from the UAC. I'm hoping some of them will dress up as celebrity chefs for fun! The winning team gets 5 bonus points for their project grade and bragging rights, of course. :)

   My other class (Agronomy majors) very much likes music, so this week they submitted songs in English that they would like to learn. I have a model I have been using with songs I have chosen before now. We listen to the song while gathering every day for the week, then after the weekly quiz on Fridays I give them the lyrics either with some words missing or an extra word on numbered lines, and we listen to the song twice for these words. Then we go through the song again to check our answers. After that, I help with new vocabulary (using the Eng-Span dictionary as necessary) and help the students tease out the meaning of the lyrics and, ultimately, the meaning of the song. The students are really looking forward to doing this with their songs. We will do one of theirs each week between now and the midterm, by which time I expect their vocabularies in English (and mine in Spanish) will probably have doubled!

   Our weather here has been beautiful the last few days, and very Spring-y. It's noticeably warmer, especially in the afternoons. We've had a couple afternoons where that warmth has translated into thunderstorms (no tornadoes here, but the lightning is impressive), but all-in-all it's been very pleasant. The change of seasons is definitely upon us, although the summer rainy season is still over a month away.

   We love and miss you all, and you are never far from our thoughts. Our prayers are with you!

         +Susan