One week already?

So far time is flying by. I spend all day at school in meetings or preparing my classroom but I still feel like I haven't accomplished that much! :\ At least my classroom is finally in working order and I'm ready to start planning tomorrow. It's a little terrifying that school starts on Tuesday and I don't have a whole lot put together yet in terms of lessons. Eek.

I have been eating out a lot this week trying to a) explore my neighborhood b) take advantage of invitations when I get them from my Venezuelan co-workers! Every elementary classroom has a full time bilingual assistant, and all of them are so sweet and welcoming! Most of them are about my age so it's great to talk with them and ask them questions about what they like to do, what they watch on TV, where they hang on the weekends, etc. It's also great to go out to eat with them knowing that they can help translate if I need it! This week we went to a couple of American places (McDonald's and Subway) and a couple of local places. Subway is nearly exactly the same except they don't have cheddar herb bread or shredded cheese, haha. But you can get plantain chips! McDonald's has a smaller menu but generally the same items, right down to Big Macs and McCafe. At the local places we have been to I've been able to read the menu and order pretty much on my own, which is reassuring! At one restaurant I found THREE vegetarian sandwiches. It is officially my favorite restaurant ever.

I don't feel like I've learned a whole lot of Spanish yet... I'm still wiping away the cobwebs with the occasional reference to my Spanish-English dictionary. I hope to take classes starting in about a month so that will be a tremendous help! Today we went to buy internet modems and try to get our connections set up. The school hires a driver to take us around for errands four days a week, so he drove us there and came in to the store with us. He doesn't speak a word of English but he is good at translating in the sense that he can break down what they are saying in to simple terms and say them slowly. I understood enough to know that my building doesn't have the wiring required for a cable connection, and my friends' building needs to put in a request to allow them to install it so we have to go back in a few days. Luckily in this instance, as with others, everyone has been patient with my struggles and able to laugh with me at my mistakes.