Week 1: Check.

And so concludes our first week here, and my, I can hardly wrap my mind around the fact that eight more weeks lie ahead of us (not that I mind it, though!). Our training for teaching TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) is complete, meaning now we are each on our own preparing lesson plans and the like. Though we only spent a couple hours each day in our training class, I can already tell that I am going to miss it dearly. Our teacher, Matthew, was a sweet elderly Irish man, which made each class that much more enjoyable. We learned how the TOEFL exam works and even got the chance to practice taking portions of the exam. Goodness, I now have so much respect for international students studying at American universities, as each student must pass this exam to study there, and the exam is pretty difficult (and this is coming from a native speaker...good grief). The exam consists of four sections: reading, writing, speaking, and listening. The most challenging aspect of this assessment is the time limit; sometimes, especially with the listening and speaking sections, students only have fifteen seconds to prepare an answer after hearing a playback of a college lecture, etc. Fifteen seconds, plus a great amount of stress? No way. International students are exceptional, enough said.

This past week, mainly because we had to travel across town to attend class, we fell into a typical Brazilian's life quite quickly. Each morning we left Wellington's apartment around 7:15, hopped on the metro for a twenty minute ride, and disembarked to grab a bus for a thirty-five minute ride to the school. If we managed to arrive early (usually unlikely, as traffic is by every means insane), we would stop at a street corner stand to buy coconuts for a refreshing drink (coconut water is surprisingly filling!). After our lesson finished, some days we would go eat acai for lunch (SO delicious, and very unlike acai in the U.S.). Here, acai is a frozen, blended mixture in a bowl, topped with bananas, strawberries, kiwi, and granola. Perfect during the heat midday. Other days, we returned to the apartment for naps and lunch. In order to get back to the apartment, though, we had to take two buses, in replacement of the metro. Why no metro? The workers at the metro are on strike for better pay, but when on strike they must work at least 30% of the time, so the metro only operates during the times of 5:30-8:30 am and 4:30-8:00 pm. Sometimes inconvenient, but awesome that they are allowed to go on strike in such a way. I hope all works out for them soon, as the metro is so much easier and faster than the bus (not to mention cheaper!).

Next week, we begin teaching on Wednesday, so I plan on tackling our TOEFL textbook and making lesson plans this weekend! Yes, I am pumped. It will be so nice to finally meet my students next week, too. We are going to have a blast (in the most educational way possible, of course...).

Until later! Ciao, my friends!