We have arrived. All went well with travel even though we had more than 250 pounds of baggage with all the supplies. It would have been a lot harder without Christine Berger, a Swiss volunteer, to help us out when we got here. She took us to dinner our first night, school the next day and has been showing us around the city. Everyone else at the school is very busy and wouldn´t have time to introduce us.
We have started teaching english with Christine who has been here since August. She is doing great even though she is teaching a non-native language in a non-native language. She developed the cirruculum and teaches each class one hour a week, from 1st to 6th grade. We are able to help a lot with pronunciation though and giving more one-on-one time to the students. The kids are great and very excited to learn english. Tommorow Christine is gone and we may teach one class on our own. We´re not sure what we will do in the future, we may keep teaching english or start helping out with the classes that are overflowing.
Communication has been bearable, but definately not easy. I´ve had a few embarressing moments where I don´t know the right word or just can´t get the idea across, they look at you and are probably thinking "tourista tonta." Most people are very kind and patient though. Zihuatanejo is a very friendly town, much more small-town like than I would have thought. Even with just the people that Christine has introduced us to, we are bumping into people on the street we know.
Blogging extremely frequently might be hard becuase we are using computers in an internet cafe and the computers are slow and the keyboards are partly rearranged.
Thanks for the support, we would love to hear from you, email us at netzavolunteers@gmail.com or comment on the blog.
Ben and Sarah
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