Dogs and Water

Another thing I will never again take for granted: running water! This morning I woke up (at 5am, like I will be doing for the rest of the year, ugh) and tried to turn on the sink, and all it gave me was a big bubbling noise. The torrential downpour we have here every night knocked out our running water! Try getting ready for school without water... not easy.

The scariest thing that I think I have ever experienced happened to me yesterday. When I say that it was the scariest thing ever... I'm serious. I went back to my house and tried to tell the family I live with here about it, and I just started crying. As I was walking home, talking on the phone to my mom, all of a sudden I heard a loud barking. There are a lot of dogs here and I have never seen one on a leash, but usually they are not aggressive. All of a sudden, I saw that this enormous brown dog was walking towards me, growling and barking. I stopped walking out of instinct (I've always been told not to run) and all I could say was "Oh my God. Oh my God," because I literally thought I was about to be attacked by a dog. And this dog would have ripped me to pieces. The crazy thing was, his owner was right there, watching it happen. At first he was laughing, because I was obviously so petrified, but then as the dog didn't stop walking towards me, he started panicking and yelling his dog's name. The dog stopped maybe two feet in front of me, ignoring his owner, barking like crazy, while I was unable to move and on the phone with my mom. Finally at the last second the dog turned and took off running down the street. It was the scariest thing that has ever happened to me, without any shadow of a doubt, because I felt so helpless. If that dog had decided to attack me, it just would have torn me up and there would have been very little I could do about it. :( awful.

It's the end of the week, and I am struggling with my class. First, I really struggle because my students cannot follow the simplest of instructions. Today I asked them to write down some really easy words in cursive, just so I could evaluate their writing. I must have repeated the instructions four or five times, but no one was writing. So I had to go around to almost every student and point to their paper and say, "write. write. write. write." I don't think they are trying to be disobedient, I think that they don't really understand English. Also, one of the other teachers told me that it is a cultural thing, a problem in the education system here that students just don't do what they're told. I am also struggling because my students range so much in ability. Some can read books and write down their thoughts in English, while others simply can't understand a word of English. I don't know how to teach to the middle child. I try to help students if they ask for help, but some finish really early and start wandering around the classroom, or worse, bothering the students who haven't finished. I don't know how to do this! (Have I mentioned that before?) I'm so frustrated. We also still don't have books or workbooks, which makes things even more difficult. I don't know.

I am going to spend the weekend sleeping, trying to stay healthy (I woke up with a sore throat this morning), and maybe visiting a pottery village near Gracias! Send me any advice you might have about fighting off dogs or managing six and seven year olds.