week 1!

Hey everyone!

Hope you’re all doing great, sorry I’ve been pretty out of contact – I have really limited internet access. Teaching has been going awesome so far I have four groups and teach at two schools – at the first school I have a group of 4-5 yr. olds who have never had English before – we’ve been doing a lot of colors/ABCs/ Head shoulders knees and toes, etc. and then another group of kids 11-15. At the next school I have another group of 11-15 and then a younger group about 7-9 year olds. Some of their favorite lessons so far have been the one on body parts – labeled students with sticky notes, it was hilarious (picture attached!) My class has been loving anything competitive so I’ve been splitting them into teams and doing things like saying words or numbers they need to run up and write. For clothing, I taught them the vocab then we got in a big group and anyone wearing certain articles stepped in the middle. The younger kids loved the hokey pokey when I say teaching them left/right, in/out – I don’t think they had heard it before! For vacations, I brought in a map of Poland I had and we did vacation plans – What mode of transportation to get there, what activities they would do there, what direction it is in (north, south…), what clothing they would need, what the weather is like, etc.. The older kids loved this!

My host family is great, I have a younger sister Martyna who is 5 and adorable and a host brother Kamil who is 8 who I’ve been playing a ton of soccer with. My host father is a hunter – in fact the wild boar that serves as the rug in the room I’m staying in is currently looking at me… Bekah has seen it and can testify to the fact that it’s terrifying. My host mother is an English teacher who works at the schools I’ve been teaching at during the year, so I’m working with a lot of her students! She’s been telling me a lot about the school system around the Biezcady region and how it’s been suffering over the past few years because there are so few students – so they get a lot less government money. She told me that in the past 10 years, 4 out of 8 local grammar schools have closed. She’s been going to a bunch of meetings over the past few weeks because they are discussing closing one of the schools I’m teaching at which would mean a bunch of teachers lose their jobs and kids have to travel a lot longer to go to school, so I’m hoping that the school remains open!!

Besides teaching and hanging out with the family, we’ve gone to church basically everyday where I see Bekah. Bekah, Mara, and I went hiking in the mountains this past weekend through a program our host families organized. We hiked for most of the day Saturday – went to the point where Ukraine, Poland, and Slovakia meet which was really cool! We then spent the night in Slovakia and the next morning visited all of these old churches and then had a massive lunch before driving back to Poland.

Can’t wait to see you all in Zakopane in a few days! Have a great week!
Liz

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