I guess I dropped the ball on this blog, didn't I? Well, things are going well. I went home to the US for the holidays and had a great time. I thought it would be hard to come back to Panama, but I couldn't stop smiling after my plane landed. That was a pleasant surprise, to realize how much I like Panama!
It's summer here now, so we don't have school. Most of us were working on region-wide summer seminars for Panamanian English teachers. Jen, Leah, and I held a week-long seminar last week for the English teachers in our region, Panama Oeste. It was a lot of work, and certainly interesting trying to work under the organization of MEDUCA (the Ministry of Education), but it ended up being a great experience. 43 teachers showed up and seemed really invested in learning and improving as teachers. I don't usually like public speaking but after the first day I loosened up. I especially enjoyed one presentation I gave on assessments and rubrics. (I love rubrics.) It was a good experience for me to put under the "personal growth" column.
This past weekend I had a trainee from the new group come visit me for four days. She was really great and it was fun to have a visitor. It was so weird to think about my visit as a trainee to Sarah and Sean a year ago and how much I've changed since then. I can't believe I've been here for a year already. Before I came here, 2 years sounded like such a long time, but it's really not. It's going by so fast.
Summer's almost over - the teachers come back the 13th, the students two weeks later, so I'll be busy again soon. I've heard rumors of some changes that will be happening at school this year, so I'm excited to see if they're true. I think it will be a very different year. I'm much more comfortable with both my Spanish and my teaching skills, as well as the community as a whole.
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