It is incredible what a difference context can make for learning. According to the language-learning app on my phone, over these three weeks I have developed a vocabulary of about 500 Spanish words. This is in part due to dedicating part of every day to studying the language, but I strongly believe that if I had not been simultaneously using my new vocabulary throughout each day, I would not have advanced so quickly. A real-life context is such a great motivator and reinforcer for learning new material. This is certainly something to keep in mind for my teaching practice.

Today at daycare we had only four children, so it was quite a calm day. We took a little field trip, cramming seven people into a five-seat car (something you would never, ever do at a Canadian daycare), to the sports area at the other end of campus. There we found a ball on the soccer field and enjoyed playing around with it for a while. The kids seemed to have difficulty with the concept of not using one’s hands to play soccer; they would stop the rolling ball with both hands, then kick it. Also, only the two older children were interested in the game, while the younger two amused themselves by crawling through holes in the goal’s net. Once the sunshine and the soccer field had tired them out a little, we took the kids to a volleyball court, where we played catch back and forth over the net and then somehow transitioned into wheelbarrow races. Later, back at the daycare, the children coloured pictures of apples in celebration of Teachers’ Day. Well, most of them did anyways; the two-year-old was too busy ripping the paper off of the crayons.

A few weeks into our trip, we are finally starting to tire of Mexican food, so we went out for pizza tonight. It was actually particularly excellent pizza! I wonder whether this has something to do with the strong Italian influence in the city (second to the Spanish influence, of course).