English 101

As I mentioned before I have been selected to teach an English class. What qualifies me to be an English teacher? Basically that I am an American and know English. I told one church member that I was teaching English and his response was..."Jamie, I've heard you speak. You don't know English!" I think that he was referring to my accent. I've had several other Americans tell me that my students won't be able to communicate with anyone outside of the Southern US. I also tried to explain this to my students, about the difference between southern and northern accents. It was kind of hard in broken Spanish. It also doesn't help that most of the English that people here know is from the little island across the pond, and as any good American knows, thats not English! But despite these factors, I press on and try to share some of my language skills with the people here, wheter they understand me or not.

Going into my first class I really didn't know what to expect or what I should teach. There are people here that have had English in school, and then those that know none. I didn't know what level of students my class would be composed of, much less how many I would have. I am invloved with 9 churches here, and the invitation was extended to all 9. As I prepared for my lesson, I decided that I should just start at the beginning, so I planned on teaching basic conversational aspects such as greetings and things like that.

The pastor of one of the churches, who I think is also the president of their presbytery, wanted me to go over to the church with him and his son, so I met them at their house, already a little late. They weren't yet ready to leave, so we waited around a little longer, making me more late. I don't know if I have explained this, but there is really no point in wearing a watch in Peru. Everything starts late, which is odd to me because it seems like everyone is always in a hurry, so you would think someone would be on time. This is still something that I am trying to get used to, but I must say that I enjoy it a little when I am debating on sleeping an extra 10 minuts or not!

So we get to the church at about 7:30, having supposed to have started at 7. I walk in the door to the site of about 40 people sitting in the pews waiting on me. I was expecting maybe half that. But there they were. I spent the next 2 hours trying to pronounce words correctly and without a Southern accent. I went over a lot of material, including the dreaded TH words. They don't use that sound here, so it was fun watching them try to say it and giving them a lot of th- words. All in all, it was a pretty good night, even though I pretty much just wrote words on the board and then had them pronounce them.

Apparently, my students didn't think that I knew English very well either, because my next class I only had 15. I don't know if I was boring, or if they thought I was going too fast or what. But the next class was actually people that knew English a little better. I also made it more fun. I taught them a song in English to start off with. Then we went over directions and we played a little hide and seek game using their new vocabulary. And I also taught them John 3:16 which I think they enjoyed.

I still have some classes to go, so we will see how that goes and if people come back or not!