A whole day of marking!

Holy man on fire. Well I´ve marked all my exams and I´m pretty happy because my class averages are 92, 91 and 81. The third is bad for ICPNA though I will have to work harder. I still have more homework marking to do though...
So, last Friday there was another teacher watching my class and then after she told me that she would be teaching my class this Friday. So, it´s nice how nobody told me about that...I don´t like having people observe my class it makes me nervous.
My hands are freezing typing this!
Well, I´m feeling pretty full after our usual 3 course meal, some of which I have no idea what I was eating but it was pretty good. I have to load the ketchup onto my rice though because I just can´t eat mountains of plain white rice. Especially with potatoes too.
Yesterday after work I went out for cake. Kind of makes going to the gym useless but it was really good and very chocolatey!
Oh, I forgot on Saturday night I went clubbing again and it was a lot of fun. There was karaoke but I didn´t sing because I´m dreadful and the people here can actually sing really well. Plus the songs they had in English were all Britney Spears and Bon Jovi. Not really in my range. My Latin dancing is improving :)
I can now lift 25kg with my ankles. I know, that´s so interesting for you.
I never made it to the mall to buy jeans. There doesn´t seem to be enough hours in the day. Yesterday Rosa and I went grocery shopping. Is it just me or is this blog really mundane?
I have a blister on my hand.
This weekend my family are going to Celendin again so Sunday will be lonely... hahaha yeah right I will go out and have fun somewhere with my friends.
Oh, one of the kids in my juniors class drew me a lovely picture with my name. It was so sweet!!
My cell phone has a radio. It´s not exactly the most useful thing in the world though. It doesn´t have a camera.
I think it´s going to rain again. It´s always raining. Raindrops keep falling on my head, keep falling on my head...
Okay, I think I´d better stop now because this blog is beginning to take the form of every random thought that pops into my head. Also, I have to go to work, at ICPNA, where I teach English. Yay!!!!!!!!!!!
Do you think that if I tie myself to the staircase at ICPNA they will let me stay here longer? No, they´ll probably send me to an asylym.
Well, okay now I must go,
Cuidate,
Gemma!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Bits and pieces

Well, finally the internet is back up but we have a new computer and it keeps crashing. So I get really annoyed and my emails are all really short because if I take too long the computer crashes and I lose everything. Blogger saves stuff every 3minutes though so this should be okay.
I have a cute little new telephone. It was a reasonable price.
On Saturday Irene and I were both sick after lunch. We think the fish must have been bad. It was awful. I was fine teaching in the morning but as soon as I got to ICPNA after lunch I felt all woozy and I was shaking while I taught and I had to actually sit down and teach because I felt so faint and then I had to run to the bathroom where I puked up the entire contents of my stomach. It got in my hair which is gross and I had to continue teaching afterwards. I washed it in the bathroom but I still felt awful teaching. It´s only the third time I´ve been sick in Peru but being sick at work is awful.
Yesterday morning I went to Porcon, which is sort of like a hutterite colony in that all the people work for the community and it´s religious, except that people get paid so they can have lots of possessions. They all get the same pay, 500 soles a month, like 180 dollars which is awful but something at least. There was like a mini zoo type thing and I sat on a llama. Haha. I took gravol so that I wouldn´t be sick on the bus but then I felt really tired haha.
In the afternoon I went to the cinema to see Up with Antonio and his really cute little sisters and his mum and Oswar, his friend from Spain. It was in Spanish but I understood most of it and it was so cute. The girls loved it they were laughing the whole time. After, we played on the dance machines at the arcade. There were these two boys there who were so good at it, but they weren´t dancing it looked like they were having seizures their legs were going all over the place! Antonio and Oswar were really good at it, they breakdanced together before. They showed me some moves. It´s pretty awesome but I´ll never beable to balance like that! haha!!!
Well, I´m off to the gym now. My midterm exams are today, I hope all my students get 100! Some wish!
Maybe today I will have a chance to buy jeans. I´ve been wanting to for a while because my one pair has broken pockets from overwearing them.
Ciao pals, take care!!

Cajamarca is awesome!

So there hasn´t been internet and I am at a cafe now, but I have been busy. I have been subbing for other teachers lots this week. On Wednesday I taught kindergarten. I wish luck to you Dana and other people who want to teach the crazy children. It is not for me, I much prefer my adults!
I feel like part of Cajamarca now. Maybe because I´ve taught a couple of hundred students and when I go out I quite often see somebody I know. Also, I just love everything about it here. I think when I have to leave I will hide and they can´t make me go back to Canada! Haha, no I will not hide of course but I have to return here someday. I´m so happy!
My family have gone to Celedin because yesterday and today here are holidays, Corpus Christi. ICPNA doens´t believe in taking a break though and I have classes so I couldn´t god It´s just Irene and I in the house, which is nice but normal because I still have to correct like 500 textbooks and go to work. Haha, I can´t come to the internt cafe without making a friend. The man next to me is from Washington. Yesterday I made a friend at the gym too, who works in the mine here.
I feel like my Spanish is way better, I understand and can translate much more for my students now. Obviously I have a long way to go, but I can understand the general gist of things and my vocabulary is much broader.
On Sunday I went to see Terminator. Haha.
This Sunday I am going to Porcon with my friend in the morning. Should be fun! always good to see new places.
Yeah, well the workbooks aren´t marking themselves and time is short so must go!
Ciao pals!

Alborada!

Hey!
So last night I went to see Alborada and it was awesome!!! Their music is so beautiful and some was in Spanish and some was in Quechua and some didn´t have words. They played the clarine, a really long instrument, and also the panpipes lots. They had some dancers, but I think I could have done the dances, they were a little bizarre and not too too hard. The opening bands were cool too although I missed the first one because it started at 7 and I had to work until 8. It was really hard to find seats because they sold the exact amount or maybe more or something and we were late. In the end we found a place to sit though. After the concert we went to Stragos, a cute little club here. It was a pretty fun night. Work yesterday was tiring, my Juniors in the morning were okay for maybe 2 hours and after that they were just tired and didn´t want to be in class anymore. I don´t blame them because it´s Saturday morning. I made a mistake in playing games in English with them though because they got all hyper after that. Oh well. In the afternoon it was hilarious because I had a whole family, the grandmother, mother, and two girls. What personalities!! It was hilirious, the grandmother was like that slightly barmy lady on tv shows.
Jen and Eric, who are teaching at ICPNA for this month and are from Minneapolis, invited me to a movie with them on Tuesday with Sarah from work too. So, that will be fun. Eric, Jen, and I are the only teachers with class on Saturday afternoon. I guess they rope in the white people for the sucky shifts. They find ICPNA disorganised as well. They taught in China for a year and it´s way different there. It´s interesting chatting with them!
All of my classes have more than 9 students so that´s good because I won´t have to pay anything.
Today we are making pizza, for the first time here. So, that will be interesting, I wonder what type of bizarre toppings we will have. Maybe it won´t be bizarre. But it probably will be. Yesterday we had fish, yucca, pototoes, rice, and corn. It´s all the same colour! haha. I found it to be very dry.
Brrr it´s cold!
My legs still haven´t cleared up the mosquito bites, it just looks like I have some kind of disease. Yucky. Despite this I´ve been wearing skirts to work.
Ciao for now!

La vida

Well, Wednesday was horrible. The head boss from Chiclayo was in town and he observed my class. As soon as he walked in I was so nervous.It was the most awful class I ever taught. Today he is going to have a meeting with me. I think he has rated us all, and I think I will be at the bottom. I am so nervous. LAter, Delicia, my boss here observed my class and I think that it went very well. So, I hope that Delicia tells him that I do actually know how to teach and I don´t get fired or anything. Oh my. Also, on Wednesday Delicia was angry because she said that I didn´t give my list from Saturday to the secretary with my exams and grades. I was pretty nervous because I gave them in on Monday and I don´t have two copies. Luckily, after 10 minutes the secretary looked around and found my package of stuff. I was so relieved. The two kids classes that I subbed for went pretty well. The kids were so cute. Why couldn´t the classes I subbed for Delicia be that calm?
Yesterday I was teaching Otoniel English at Santa Apolonia and writing poetry, and I saw a parrot! It was just sitting on a tree. How awesome is that!
I have no time these days, I have to go to the gym now. Yesterday I got my haircut, here is a pic.
NExt Wednesday I am giving a private lesson to a kid. Gotta go ciao.

New Cycle

Wow, so last night was crazy.
First, I went to the office to hand in my exams from Saturday and the exams that Rebekkah gave me, as she´s moved to Chiclayo now where her man lives. There was some kind of problem which I didn´t understand about Saturday and I was very exasperated because it seemed like I was to blame for something...but it´s not possible because I didn´t do anything wrong. Then, later when I gave Sarita her book back she asked me how 5 of her students failed the exam in her class which I subbed for. I don´t know!! But she was okay and everything the material is tough as it´s an advanced class.
Apparently there were two different schedules made so we were all so confused. I went to the classroom on my schedule and had all sorts of different students come in who weren´t in my class and then a teacher told me I didn´t have a class, which I did. So I had to move to another classroom, but the room was full of students from a different class so my boss came and sorted everyone out. Good grief. Then for my next class I had to move to a different room which is quite small, especially for one of my classes. Neither schedule was right. So, I lost about half an hour of my first class because of all the confusion. But, I´m so happy to have my reg.1 class back, who are now my reg.2 class. I have so much fun teaching them it´s awesome.
One thing that is really weird is that in my Reg.1 class I have new students, and then I have students from my pre-1v class last cycle. So some students speak practically no English and others know lots. I don´t understand how I´m supposed to teach this class because obviously the pre-1vs know how to introduce themselves etc. Oh well.
Markus emailed me that Kenya has died. I was so sad to hear this way. She was a good dog because she liked me...
Did you hear about the Air France plane that disappeared. Scary stuff. There was one Canadian on board too.
At the gym yesterday I was still able to lift the same weights so yay! Estoy delgado ahora!!
Nothing else new for the moment. Yesterday we had Cuban rice again, rice with fried banana and fried eggs. I love fried banana!!
Keep emailing me and sharing your news!!
The pic is in the Plaza De Armas of Peru!
Cuidarte, Gemma

The Unborn

So, last night I went to cinema to watch The Unborn, which was in English with Spanish subtitles. Man was I ever freaked out because I am such a baby with horror movies. But, I did manage to correctly predict the outcome in the first 5 minutes. I should write horror movies. It took me about 4 hours to fall asleep last night though because it made me think so much. Good grief. Although, it makes me laugh how horror movies always have similar predictable things, like the girl who sees a ghost and then wanders off into the woods on her own or the lights always going off when someone is going to die or the girl who opens the door when the bell rings even when she looks outside and sees nobody there. I mean, if it were me I´d be running away as fast as possible, but these horror movie people seem to enjoy the most dangerous route possible.
In the afternoon yesterday I went to Santa Apolonia with Heber. A little kid wanted to tell me the history so he did and Heber helped me understand where I had no clue what was going on. He was such a cute kid. I think I might have mentioned before how much I love Santa Apolonia. I spoke in Spanish pretty much the whole time and Heber understood most of it. Yay!!
I forgot to mention that in Chiclayo in the Psychology session the lady asked a question in Spanish and after I answered she asked how old I was and then did this, oh right rolling eyes thing. I hate how some people dismiss my answers because of my age. I don´t think that it´s fair, especially since I have met a lot of people here who are older than me but seem so much younger and totally clueless about life. I worked pretty hard to get the respect of my students after telling them my age. The first few classes I had the "what could she possibly teach me" attitude from a few of my students, especially the older ones, but by the end of the cycle I had the same students telling me that they would be signing up for my class this cycle.
Antonio has informed me that some of his friends told him to stop hanging out with me because I am a common white girl. Well, isn´t that nice. His friends don´t even know me. But, I am now used to the attitude that many people here have to white people and I´m not too fond of the rude men here either. I prefer the people who are my friends and don´t care at all about the colour of my skin or my age. Antonio told me he doesn´t care what his friends say and that they are ignorant, which I think is pretty true.
Despite the negatives I am actually having the time of my life and am sad that I only have two more cycles to teach.
On Saturday after work I am going to see Alborada in concert, they are a group of native people here who sing traditional songs. I am pretty pumped. I have a DVD of them that I have watched and they are pretty original. In two weeks I am going to go to Porcon and I am pumped because I have heard so many times how awesome it is!
My legs are so itchy in the minefield of mosquito bites.
I am pretty happy to be going to the gym after almost a week because I think I won´t be able to life the same weights anymore. It´s discouraging if I have to go down again. I will have to work hard.
arrr there was something else but I can´t remember what it was...
Well, the pics are of my roomate, Pilar, Ray and I at the restaurant and then just of Pilar and I in the Plaza De Armas of Chiclayo.
Cuidarte,
Un abrazo,
Gemma