las chulas

mmmm churros - what a delicious treat, late at night, early in the morning - no matter the time of day they are tasty (and full of calories...). unfortunately we have an ice cream parlor and churros place within literally 50 steps of our front door, which is much closer than the gym we are members of. hopefully we balance it out with some workout - but i dant say for sure...

don't know if you're aware - but in mexico (and most spanish speaking countries) everyone has two last names, and when we all had to sign up for social security they made us add our mother's maiden name. to which we all said "this is not our legal name, and it is not this way in our passport..." to which they replied "it's your mexican name". soooo we all (malita, jenna, breanna, charlie, and i) have been commenting on how we love having our family dinners and watching our movies and just hanging together - thus was born our 3rd last name - we are the Chulas.

my Mexican name is Emily Rose Klinke Ruszkiewicz Chulas, which is not as long as many names o fmy students.

well because my school is Catholic they do retreats every friday with a different class. and i teach 1A so my retreat was the first one of the year and it was today. it was actually really interesting.

lately i have been kind of low because the school doesn't have really good communication with the staff and i feel like every time i turn around there is a new thing i should have been told about - and wasn't told until after it was necessary. for instance, today for the retreat my students were supposed to bring their crayons, but no one informed ME of this important piece of information until we were all seated on the bus ready to leave. so i felt really frustrated because even though that is minor little things like that have been piling up... needless to say that is a tad irritating.

anyway, the retreat today was really nice becuase it gave me time to reflect. the entire retreat was in spanish - and even though i understand it, if my mind wanders for a moment it is hard to follow. i always have to pay really close attention and especially when there is new vocabulary involved. i realized how my students must feel. they are in english class for half the day where they have to pay serious attention and it's not even stuff they really care about, kind of how i felt about hearing about Jesus today. i felt like the shoe was flipped and i got to see school from their perspective. then i got to thinking, hmmmm i am in ANOTHER country so i should take these minor yet irritating differences into account as being cultural differences. and albeit sometimes annoying, they are to be taken in stride and accepted as customary of torreon mexico.

the kids have gotten progressively better since monday. they have learned most of my routines which i am happy about. today we had one hour before we went to our retreat so i decided to play simon says and do the hokey pokey before. they were sooooo into it, they absolutely LOVED it. which in turn made me soooo happy! it was adorable to watch them and listen to their lil voices and mexican accents... it was the perfect way to end a super exhausting week.

well this weekend will be hopefully relaxing and restful. malita's grandmom lives in torreon so we are making a Chulas family trip to her house tomorrow. I'll let you know how it goes!!! peace out for now