Tired

Super full day today. I was busy from 1pm-9pm straight today. Had a little break in the morning, but I am beyond ready to hit the sack as I write this. Kind of weird to think about all the time when I am writing these posts you are all asleep. You are ahead of me in time. 

Speaking of time, remember I said I feel like I went back in time a bit with this cell phone I have here. Check it out, and notice how small it is. haha My hand is in the photo so you have a reference point for size.

Met with a nurse practitioner this morning, and she covered some basic services the hospita and health centers offer here and basic daily practices and tips to keep ourselves healthy and avoid certain things. Had a little break, and then went into our next language class working on days of the week, months of the year, and times of the day. One of my colleagues mentioned today that every time they say something in Samoan he thinks of a Spanish response in his head, as he had learned some of it previously. I said that I've been doing the same thing. I continued to think about the idea, and I realized I am now working on a fourth language to add to my list. English obviously is the language I grew up with. Through my high school and college education I have become rather fluent in Spanish. My liberal arts education also led me to be able to read some ancient Koine Greek. Now here I am learning some native Samoan. Four languages....

I tried to Skype one of my best friends Karena today, but for some reason our connection wasn't quite there as we both tried to log on. Guess we'll have to try again soon. My best friends and family have been sending me emails though, which I'm really enjoying. I also love logging onto my blog everyday and checking the statistic for how many people have viewed the page. Crazy that it can do that, but it makes me feel good that there are people out there who are following my story. I'm not just writing to write. Thank you :-)

This afternoon we broke into our content areas again, and we worked on some lesson plan ideas today and discussed some activities. I am working on a lesson plan about observation, question, and hypothesis - the first steps in the scientific method. The lesson has been festering in my head for about a week now, and just today a cool activity hit me. My colleagues enjoyed it in our class today.

I would like everyone to try my activity. (Literally do it, please). I'd love to get you all involved. Follow these directions:

1. Take out a piece of paper.

2. Draw a square on the paper.

3. Draw a triangle on the paper.

4. Draw a rectangle on the paper.

5. Draw another square on the paper.

6. Draw a circle on the paper.

7. Write your name on the paper.

8. Take a picture of your paper and email it to me at jessb2008@hotmail.com

Then in a few days, I will explain what we do next. Should be fun and educational :-)

After our big session working on lesson plans, we had our final World Teacher Training Session working on classroom setup. We worked with a partner designing a classroom and building little models of them. Here's the room Melanie (from Chicago) and I assembled today.

I was on cooking crew tonight, and we made jumbalaya. It went over really well. Took some prep time, but everyone enjoyed it. Finally, I worked on a little lesson with my partner for this project as we present these tomorrow (well by the time you all read this it will technically be today/Friday).