Le Culture

Today was the day! I had my presentation ready on a small hard drive that I had to buy at a local store across the street from where I am staying. I arrived at the school first thing in the morning and went into the main office to obtain the equipment. The women from Creciendo en Amor helped me take everything to the classroom. 

As soon as I started setting up the laptop for the presentation, the kids wanted to touch everything. They all surrounded the laptop and were so amazed. Once they were settled in their seats I realized how nervous I was! My presentation was about the culture in the United States but with a focus on Florida. I talked about the weather, the types of people and its diversity, and different tourist areas. The presentation was a success! The kids were focused the whole time while I was up there, I would ask them questions to keep them involved and had them ask me questions too. My slides consisted of all pictures and I would just talk about each picture, this way they were focused on the screen at all times. I took a couple screen shots of some of the slides.

 

After the presentation we passed out the letters for the intercultural project. We asked that those that did not receive a letter can open up their notebooks and draw something from my presentation. It seemed the only slide they all remembered was the one about Walt Disney. Even the children that received letters disregarded the instructions and also drew Disney stuff as you can see below.

 They were adorable! Now they all have dreams of going to Disney and I told them it’s possible but that they had to stay in school. I went back to the main office and put away all the equipment and met with the volunteer coordinator. She introduced me to an English professor named Steven whom I will start working with. He is one out of the three English professors in the school and we briefly touched up on the projects that they are running. He told me to come to a meeting tomorrow for the club called “Jovenes Forjadores” to learn all about them and their purpose. All I know so far is that they are a group of older kids in 9^th grade and beyond that speak English well. I guess tomorrow I will see what they are all about.