Mallorca Day #3

Today was my second day of class. It was good, but yesterday's class was even better. The class is Content Literacy, which means teaching literacy through other subjects such as social studies, science, and math. But we are also learning general strategies for teaching reading comprehension and writing, and yesterday our professor had us try out several of them together in groups. They were really fun, and I'm looking forward to being able to try them out with students some time.

We meet from 8:30-1:30, with a 20 minute break in the middle. It goes by fast, though, when you're having fun. The class ends a week from tomorrow, so things are moving pretty quickly. We have a research project due on Wednesday, a Technology project due the following Friday (the last day of class) along with having to teach one part of a lesson to the class that day, and then a lesson plan project due after the class is done (of course by then we're busy with our NEXT class!) Thankfully the projects are as big as they seemed at first.

I'm writing my research project on the flood of 1953 in the Netherlands. One we research our topic and write a short 2-page summary of our information, we then need to creat 5 different "genres" of literature: poem, newspaper article, cartoon, song, facebook conversation, etc. Each one isn't super long, but I think I'm still going to be very busy!

Yesterday I went down to the beach for an early evening swim. I wantd to actually swim down the beach, but the rubber strap of my 13-year-old goggles broke, so I didn't get to do much swimming. But boy, it's really a climb to get back up to the apartment. I tried walking DOWN the hill I mentioned on Tuesday instead of taking the stairs, but that was even worse! It was soooo steep, that I figured it would be better for my legs to walk up all those stairs.

Today instead of going to the beach I went on a little shopping trip with Carol, one of my colleagues from ASH. We had a nice time, but by the time I had walked back up the hill to get back to the apartment, I was drenched in sweat. So I decided to go for a quick dip in the pool here. It was very refreshing, but I realized I find pools really boring, and one I get in I don't know what I'm supposed to do (if it's not big enough to swim laps, or I don't have a floaty device to lie around and soak up the sun).

Tonight I'm meeting up with some classmates at a local bar to watch the Germany/France semifinal match of the Euro Cup. I hope I will get to know some nice people better!

Here's a picture of the outside of the school: