Today marked the start of our classes here at the Universidad Nacional de Rosario. I had a minor setback trying to get to the school when I couldn't figure out how to unlock the door to the apartment from the inside and Eugenia had already left for work, but I figured out how to get out and walked to the school. Spanish class started at 9:30 a.m. at the Fundación Prats (don't ask me what that means because I still don't understand). There were only 3 of us in the class with our teacher, Sole. Sole is very patient with us because I think she's still trying to gauge where we all are with our knowledge of Spanish, and I understood almost everything that she said in class. We did an exercise/played a game where we wrote down things about ourselves in different categories, but 4 of the categories had to be lies. Then we switched papers and had to guess what things were true and what things were not. After we finished that exercise, we made a chart with things "lo que sé" (what I know) and "lo que quiero saber" (what I want to know) about Rosario." Sole told us about the historical significance of the city, pointed out some of the main roads, told us where some good places to go dancing and to get drinks are...totally normal things for a teacher to tell her students, right? The last activity we did for the day involved learning about the countries in South America, almost like a mini geography lesson. Class ended at 12 (2.5 hours!), but it didn't feel very long because we took a break in the middle and the class felt like a discussion between friends rather than a lecture from the professor.
After class, all of the students from our program met outside the Fundación Prats and we walked to Zona 36 for lunch. When we finished, all but one of us walked to the international programs site for our ESOL class with Karie and Terry. This class was also 2.5 hours long, but it was in English and seems to be very similar to the class on diversity in the classroom that I took at Ball State. This class is focused solely on how to work with English Language Learners in the classroom, and the 4 of us in the class (and the 1 who decided to sit in) are all very passionate about the subject, which made it easy for us to engage in conversation right from the start. Karie and Terry are also very passionate, and they don't lecture us like teachers either. Karie is from Western Oregon University and made me feel very welcome on our first night in Rosario. Terry teaches in Portland and has her high-school aged daughter, Ella, with her and brings her to classes with us. I think that because we have spent time with these professors outside of the classroom, they feel like friends with more knowledge on the subject of teaching English Language Learners than teachers, which is a cool dynamic to have in the classroom.
Once I was done with classes for the day, the other students in my program decided that we should meet back at the site at 7 (when the last class of the day was done) so we could go on a mission to find stamps. I walked back to the apartment and all the lights were on, but Eugenia wasn't anywhere to be found. I caught up on my social media and started reading for my homework, but then it was time to walk back to the site to meet my friends. Once the 5 of us who were on going on our mission arrived, we went to this store on Córdoba that looked like Hollister in the front, with strong perfume wafting out the front door and bumping music, but had a little store that sold school supplies in the back. The man in the store told us where we could go for stamps, but that store was closed so we would have to go tomorrow. The man seemed to know that we weren't very fluent in Spanish and he used big gestures to demonstrate everything, and we reacted like the people in those cheesy, over-the-top language learning videos when we figured out where he was telling us to go. Since we couldn't complete our mission, we went and sat in a little café on the corner and talked. It was really fun to get to know this group better, and I think we'll have a lot of fun together learning about Rosario together. We're already trying to figure out how to take a trip to Iguazu Falls sometime while we're here, but we've heard that it's a 24 hour bus ride away so we're not sure when we'll have time to go.
I really like everyone involved with our program, but I definitely come from the most different background. The other 5 students are all elementary education majors from Oregon, so they can talk about the schools out there like I could talk with other people from Indiana about Purdue or IU. They've asked a little about Indiana, but I've just told them there's a lot of corn in the state, I'm from a suburb of Indianapolis, and that Muncie is often referred to as, "Funice" (I'm sure they really want to visit after my vivid description.). In our ESOL class, Terry and Karie were very interested in learning what the differences are between the ESOL programs at Western Oregon and Ball State, but there were some pedagogical terms they used in class that I had never heard of before. I don't think the differences are big enough to negatively impact my performance in the class, as Terry and Karie really liked the things I had to contribute to the discussion. This class is just further helping to put me in the position of my future students that will be minorities in my classroom, and hopefully this experience will help me to understand how to better reach those students to teach them effectively. Although I'm having to adjust, everyone has been really nice and welcoming and accommodating and I'm having no problems fitting in with these other students. Since tomorrow is the 4th of July in the States, Beba (the site director) wanted us to be able to celebrate with a fiesta at the site with sandwiches (that's seriously what she said she would get for us to celebrate, but today we passed her on the street and she said she would get us pizza and we were all disappointed) so hopefully that will be fun! I'm sad that I have to miss the 4th of July on the lake with my family, but if anything can make up for it, it will be the Argentine sandwiches.
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