Hotel Posada Coatepec Veracruz

... but I won't be sleeping. I am too excited about the work we have to do to prepare the city for the cast and vice versa.

Having written a little about the day so far, it doesn't seem to come off as too exciting. However my Spanish is improving immensely. I am so excited about our work. I get to see my awesome cast in just 4 days. And I am finally enjoying my time in Veracruz (it helps that the weather is ...

... taxi driver headed north and ten minutes later I was there. It was a typical spanish looking yellow building with the house number 61 by the door. Erik and Linda, who own the school where waiting on me before I could get out of the cab. After a brief introduction I was taken upstairs to my room. The rooms are very nice and comfortable with their own bathrooms. The cost of the class, $625.00 a week US, includes your room with air conditioner, two ...

... in us the people of Orizaba were. A group of kids would constantly be hangin around us watching us draw. One little boy kept running to his mom and bringing me back some sort of punch drink while I drew in the Zocalo. All the girls giggle when we walk by, I don't know if its good or bad, but in my mind its good. We even made the town's newspaper. It's incredible that eleven people would make such a splash in a town of 100,000.

... I can learn something and they get the satisfaction of giving something to someone else. I could not accept the help of others before, even when I was ignorant. It meant I was lesser than others and I could not deal with it. Against the elements The fastest finish for the Galveston Veracruz race was 96 hours. That was in XXXX. We knew we had a high pressure building so we expected good weather. We were hoping to dodge what few ...

... on the keyboard. My first thought was "Improvise? No! I need sheet music! Where's the sheet music?!". It took me a little while to become accustomed to the idea of just making something up on the spot in front of a group of people. Improvisation is such a natural thing for some people, and completely unnatural for others. In Panama, my host father Carlos couldn't read a note of music, but he could pick up almost any instrument that you gave him and ...

... in English). It gave the kids a chance to show off a bit and diversified the lesson a little. On the other hand, the children like to start singing the previous songs that I had taught them during the lesson. Obviously, that was distracting and I had to tell them that we were "learning a new song today." They couldn't sing the old songs in the new lesson. Going back to Tuesday's lesson with improvisation and "Los Patitos ...

... while they were playing. Also, having the children do the "pa-ti-tos" while I sang the song was sort of a spur-of-the-moment idea, but it worked really well. It gave them a chance to practice playing the rhythm against the song before they had to do so on their own with the instrument. I had debated over having them alternate hands for the rhythm (L-R-L, R-L-R) or having them repeat the same pattern (L-R-R ...

... the computer kept freezing. Finally, as she had almost finished filling in all the necessary information, she checked the clock- 3 p.m....time for her shift to end. So, she closed out ALL of the information (losing everything) and gave her seat to the next girl who was scheduled to take over, and had to start on our tickets from scratch. It took that girl awhile to get comfortable, and after changing chairs a few time (kind of like Goldilocks, "This chair ...

... Teaching Reflection The first group of students was fairly well behaved. It took them a little while to figure out why they were there...had anyone told them beforehand? They were surprisingly controlled during the warm-up (the shake out) and, although next time I'll try to make it more specific, I want to repeat it. Maybe 4 shakes of each (hands, feet) and repeat. Next time, when it comes time to teach ...

... moves and again I improved my Latin dancing skills a bit! I might get good at it some time ;) The next day her parents took us to Tlaxcala...itīs a city in another state close to Puebla. It was a really nice place...very quiet/tranquillo. It had a bullfightingstadium and a lot of churches. There were two churches that looked really nice. I took pictures of them, but only from the outside since I did not feel comfortable taking a picture when a mass is taking place ...