christ the redeemer

The train that took us up.

On our way.

The classic pose.

Commitment.

This picture is a little awkward, but I love it.

Christ

The view

We came, we saw, we conquered.
One more of our big "to-dos" crossed off the list. One of my bucket list items crossed off as well.

jardim botanico

the botanical gardens
Prepare for photo overload.
(click on the pictures to make them bigger)

 

There were canals that ran all throughout the gardens. 

Some were larger like the one on the right, but most were tiny little channels like the one on the left.

 

 

Take note of the little old man in the background.

I was terribly excited to discover a bromeliad greenhouse. Ever since watching the rainforest episode of Magic School Bus when I was little, I've had an affinity for bromeliads. The little man was sweeping away in the back of the greenhouse and as we neared his corner of the world he gave us a grin and began speaking to us in Portuguese. We explained that we did not speak Portuguese, but this did not phase him in the slightest. He laughed and began gesturing animatedly at various exotic plants and blooms throughout the greenhouse that we had not previously noticed. He continued to chatter on in Portuguese excitedly, even though we could not understand him. After receiving our private tour, we thanked him profusely and left.

I just love happy people. This guy's profession, as far as I can tell, revolves around cleaning a greenhouse. I'll admit that doesn't sound like the best job in the world, but it just goes to show that any job can be the best job in the world if you see it that way. He takes the time to appreciate his greenhouse and share that appreciation with the silly Americans that come through and have no idea what they're looking it. It makes all the difference.

This aqueduct was clearly blocked off to indicate that people should not walk on top of it.

Well, I did it anyway. No regrets.

 

These birds looked like robins but with yellow bellies. I've always had a thing for yellow birds so I spent a great deal of time trying to catch them in a photograph. 

There were hundreds of different birds in the gardens. It took me until about half-way through the day to take a moment to stop and listen, but once I did I couldn't stop. Birds are severely under-appreciated.

Bamboo

 

So in a nutshell, I'm absolutely in love with these gardens. I don't know what it was but they had such an enchanted feel to them. That's the only word I can think to describe it. I felt like at any moment a fairy or gnome could pop out of the woods.

Okay, that was a little corny, but if you keep up with this blog you should be used to that by now.

lost and found

I was looking for something on my iPod the other day and I unearthed a handful of forgotten pictures.

Ipanema Hippie Fair

Hippie Fair's Bahian food booth

The McCafe at the closest McDonalds. It's like a real cafe. There are sandwiches and pieces of cake and espresso. I was alarmed by this.

Someone graffiti-ing.

I don't know the name of this place, but it's near downtown. It's a little square with lots of shady places to sit, a few monuments and a beautiful church as a backdrop.

These two strangers saw me taking a picture and asked if I wanted a picture of them. Of course I did.

The care package my parents sent me! Peanut butter is about US$15 for a container that size. Needless to say, I was pretty psyched.

It was so beautiful out yesterday Kelly and I couldn't bear to be inside. She read on our doorstep and I camped out on a towel in the middle of the ally. Totally worth it, the weather was perfect.

In five weeks I will be settling back into my home routine. I can't believe it. I prepared myself for this experience to fly by but not this quickly. I have to soak up every single minute here while I can. We've accomplished a lot this weekend so far, I'll have photo evidence soon.

lessons

Yesterday I taught a subtraction lesson based around the song "Five Little Speckled Frogs." I taught the kids the song and printed off these cute little frogs and a log to provide a visual as we sang.

(Frog and log props can be found here.)

When we go to the last line of the song that says "Now there are ____ speckled frogs" I would wait for the students to call out how many frogs were remaining. I would periodically stop the song to talk about how many frogs we took away and how many are left. They're just learning the subtraction basics right now, so there's no equations and they have not been introduced to the term "subtraction" yet. 

Following our song I put students in groups for learning centers. My mentor teacher worked with one group on language while I worked with another on math. I created this worksheet to go along with the lesson.

(Find it here.)

Students were asked to draw a picture of frogs on a log then draw arrows to indicate how many jumped into the pool. They then had to fill in the blanks to indicate how the song would go if it were about their picture.

I thought the lesson went really well. The kids were engaged and eager to participate in the song. They were creative with their drawings and demonstrated understanding of the topic by explaining the numbers they wrote and comparing these numbers to their drawings. My mentor teacher also loved the lesson; her and the assistant said it went very well.

The person observing my lesson had a long list of suggestions, which frustrated me at first. I normally take constructive criticism very well but I've been experiencing low self-esteem about my ability to teach. In reality, he was just trying to help me and he had a ton of great ideas. I just want to be perfect for my students and when I'm not I feel like a failure. I think what I need to try to understand is that I will never be perfect, but I should always strive for perfection.

Anyway, I still think the lesson went well. Later in the day I taught a vocabulary review lesson where we played a game "Students vs. Teacher." I found it on this website, which has a ton of great ideas for word review games. It's such a simple game, but very effective in keeping students under control. I showed the kids pictures of English vocabulary they have learned. If they raised their hands quietly, I called on one of them and they answered correctly they got a point. If they spoke out of turn or didn't raise their hands, I got a point. You wouldn't believe how silent the classroom became. Then they won and I let them do a little bit of cheering to celebrate :)

international festival

Saturday was the International Festival at school. The other student teachers and I were in charge of the United States booth. We were given brownies, hot dogs and Coca-Cola to share with those attending. I'm pretty sure American food is more popular here than it is in the United States. We were a frequently visited booth.

The event was such a great time. I saw many of my students (who were overjoyed to see me on a weekend) and I had the opportunity to meet quite a few parents too. It was great to get to see a lot of the staff in such a relaxed atmosphere as well.

There was a booth representing each country that OLM has students from. There were about 30 booths in all and each booth was decorated with traditional tapestries and clothing. Each booth had authentic food as well and needless to say I tried a little of everything. In addition to the booths, there were student performances as well as a Samba band. Lots of dancing and lots of fun.

This also serves as a little sneak preview of the school. It's so unique, I'm going to spend a day taking pictures of it soon to share.

ketchup

I'm a teeny bit behind on blog posts, so here's a little bit of what happened this week.

Completely bombed a lesson. While being observed.
I planned too complicated of a lesson and took too long explaining the plan. The kids got out of hand and were being disrespectful. I got frustrated and lost my cool a little bit. In the end,  I focused too much on behavior and we did not get to complete the bulk of the lesson. I've done a lot of reflecting  and I'm actually really glad that this happened and that it happened during an observation. Feedback on an awesome lesson is all well and good, but what I really need feedback on is the lesson I ruined. Because I was being observed during this lesson I was able to talk out all my thoughts afterward and get some great advice from my mentor.

I had been focusing too much on the negatives. Don't do this, stop doing that, you're not sitting properly. It's emotionally draining to be that negative all day. I was leaving school feeling exhausted and not satisfied with my teaching ability. It's because I was managing behavior in a way that does not parallel my personality. I should handle behavior in a way that makes me feel comfortable and consequently makes the kids feel at ease and safe in the classroom. I've made some changes to my behavior management techniques and it has done wonders so far. The kids are more respectful and I can leave school feeling satisfied and excited for the following day.

Celebrated Kyleigh's birthday!
My roommate's birthday was on Thursday. We decided to go to the beach and walk for a little bit then go out for dinner. We ended up seeing the most gorgeous sunset yet and of course I forgot my camera. I snagged some pictures from Kelly though.

Lesson learned. Never leave the house without my camera.

The waves were huge and lots of surfers were out but there was a large sand bar that developed so by the time the waves got to us at the shore they were very calm. For the first time we found shells at the beach, and a lot of them. I was very excited about that. One of my favorite things to do at the beach is hunt for shells and beach glass.

Then we went out to dinner where I got this delicious caipirinha with watermelon, tangerine, lime and basil in it.

Today was the International Festival at school. That deserves a post all to itself, so I'll be checking in again very soon.

the kindness of strangers

Something that has really struck me while I've been here is the eager assistance I've experienced from strangers when it comes to the language barrier.

For example:
Yesterday I went out and about by myself for the first time just to get a cup of coffee down the street. I'm walking along, enjoying the beautiful day and thinking about how much less intimidating it is to be out by myself than I thought it would be. I walk into the little coffee shop and as I try to express to the woman at the counter that I want an iced coffee to go she repeats "espresso" in response. Espresso happens to taste like dirt to me so as I'm rifling through my translation dictionary trying to figure out where I'm going wrong the guy standing next to me says "Do you need some help?" I look up at him like I have never been so happy to see this stranger in my life. I was really desperate for a good cup of coffee. After some discussion he explains to the woman what I want, chuckles and says "You just have to make a motion like this towards the door," and flails his arms around a little bit with a wink. I thank him one more time, he says no problem and with that he's gone.

This has happened my student teaching comrades and I multiple times throughout our stay here. Often times, the people we run into seem eager to practice the little bit of English they know and we'll laugh a little at the combination of broken Portuguese, English and charades that we use to get our point across.

It's a pleasant surprise so kindly-received by this country.

unconditional love of kindergartners

My supervising teacher has been absent the past three days on account of attending an education conference in Argentina. This left me in the teacher position and the classroom aid to help as needed. My teacher made sure I was well-prepared before leaving but even so, I'm exhausted. Students are much louder here overall than students in the United States and being loud enough to get their attention when necessary has left me with the raspy remains of a voice. I guess I'm out of practice.

Great things
I did a "touch" science lesson all by myself on Thursday that went exceptionally well. I let them touch ice and noodles and describe them, then I went to each group and allowed them to play with "oobleck." Oobleck is the cornstarch and water mixture that baffles many including myself and my kindergartners. They loved it. They were also surprisingly well-behaved and came up with some killer descriptions.

One of my students brought in a book he wrote and asked me to read it to the class. He hands me some haphazardly stapled together pieces of printer paper accompanied with a slightly confusing story line. Needless to say, I was overjoyed to see a little one as shy as this guy so excited to share some literature he created. I read it to the class with extra expression and enthusiasm. When I finished, I suggested that we thank our friend for sharing. To my delight, the students enclosed him in a giant group hug while yelling "thank you!" and "what a good story!" So sweet.

Not so good thing
Yesterday, while the classroom assistant was at lunch I had to take the students to gym. Here's how it went.

1. Line kids up
2. Go to gym
3. See another class going into gym
4. Assumed I misread the schedule
5. Get embarrassed
6. March back to classroom
7. Realize our schedule says I was there at the correct time
8. Line kids up
9. Go to gym
10. See class in the gym
11. Teacher of said class tells me I have the wrong time
12. Back to the classroom

For the record, I had the right time, but the kids had no clue. All they knew is that I dragged them all over the school and they didn't get to go to gym class.

Here's where the unconditional love comes in.
I sat them down after this fiasco and had a little talk with them. I explained that everyone makes mistakes, even teachers, and Miss Nar made a mistake today. I apologized and asked if they would forgive me.

They said yes. Not even just that, they did their best in their little munchkin way of making me feel better. A chorus of "it's okay" "we can just stay in the classroom instead of going to P.E." and "don't worry Miss Nar, it's not a big deal" rose from the class.

So here's what I'm getting at. One of the beautiful things about kindergartners in my opinion is that they love unconditionally. It doesn't matter if I had to give them a stern talking-to 3 minutes earlier, if I sit down on a chair anywhere near them they're going to crawl up onto my lap and put their arms around my neck. Or in this case, even if in their mind I am the villain who stole their gym class from them they see my distress and do their best to make me feel better. It's really a beautiful thing.

One last thing on that note, I was stopped by a parent of one of the students who was giving me the most trouble over the past few days.
"Oh boy," I thought.
"Thank you for helping while Ms. Malouk was gone," she said "My daughter talks about you a lot. She says you're a great teacher."

Heart, melted.

7 more weeks

☑ Tijuca Forest
☑ Copacabana
☑ Santa Theresa
☐ Buzios
☑ Carnival
☑ Watch the sunset from Arpoador
☐ Christ the Redeemer
☑ Ipanema Hippie Fair
☑ Ipanema
☐ Jardim Botanico (Botanical Gardens)
☐ Lapa Arches and Stairs
☑ Petropolis
☑ Sugar Loaf

 

 

 

 

Unrelated to Sugar Loaf, there's now a juice bar right around the corner and it is perfectly delicious. Get ready for lots of juice updates.