Spanish started three weeks ago...so far not too hard and quite fun. My new friend in Spanish is also an elementary education student, but she attends New Mexico Highlands, which is where Mom got her certificate when I was in middle school so it's kinda fun. She is working on her ESL endorsement as well and has not taken Spanish for a few years, so we are working together to remember and get back in the groove. It's really quite fun and I feel like I am doing better than I thought. I got an 80% on my first quiz which was exciting. I even managed to get all of the points for the writing portion which was the section I was most concerned about. I am hoping to start going to House of Worship again to practice and use what I am learning because I know that will help me to retain the information, vocabulary and grammar. It's pretty exciting and I can't wait to learn more and practice.
This week, the ESL(English as a second language)summer institute began. The institute is six weeks, Monday to Friday from 8am to 12:45pm. It's intensive for nine credits and experience working with second language learners. On Monday we will start working with the students for half of the time we are at the institute each day. The students come for four out of the six weeks to practice their English before going back to regular schooling in August. Emily and I will be teaching first grade together which will be kinda fun but have many challenges as well. I am excited and nervous about working with the students because we do not know what their level of English will be. I will be curious to see how everything works out. We will start working on lesson plans tomorrow, which I think will help me feel less nervous because at this point Emily and I only know that we would like to do lessons based around animals of the world. The experiences that will come from teaching ESL students for four weeks will help with my student teaching in the fall if we have ESL students in the classroom. I am excited for all the possibilities!
In other news, Mike is also taking summer classes so we are both super busy during the week and then try our best to hang out over the weekend. Over Memorial Day weekend, we moved Mike from the house near Nob Hill/UNM area, to an apartment complex that is about three miles away from my house. It's super exciting because now it takes less than ten minutes to get from here to there and he is right up the street from the dealership. It was fun to work together to set up the apartment and make it home for Mike. We have also been trying to do some Spanish practicing, even though we are in different classes, but it's a lot of fun for me to review the first level vocabulary while helping Mike learn what he needs for class. The weekend previous to moving Mike, we went on a road trip to Nebraska and Colorado. It was wonderful to see Mike's family again, see how much Sawyer has grown since December when I first met him and catch up with everyone in a short time. Then in Denver, I got to experience my first VW swap. Mike introduced me to some of his long-time friends from the VW scene and camping buddies, showed me the way he wants the bus to look after some work gets done and we got to spend time just hanging out and being silly. There was a lot of driving that weekend but it also gave us a chance to get out of town a bit before starting summer school.
Life has not slowed down since UNM let out for the summer, but life is good. Mike makes me smile every day with the smallest of things and it's just fun to know that he is there whenever I need him. More about summer adventures at a later time!
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