Day 17

A couple things about my new living quarters.  The next door neighboors have a rooster.  The first morning I thought it was kinda cool, being awoken each morning by a rooster.  Then it kept going and going and I realized it must have started at like 4am and continued all morning. Luckily this morning I must have adjusted to the sound and didn't wake until close to the time I needed to get up anyway.

The other thing is that there is a police station on the 5 minute walk between my house and school which makes me feel a bit safer.  Also, usually when I walk by in the morning the officers seem to be having their morning meeting so that's kinda fun.

I liked my breakfast this morning.  It was kind of an oatmeal but with more milk than I'm used to, more porridge like.  I also got a banana! In all it ended up being too much food!  But then my lunch ended up being not enough though very good.  It was kind of a chop suey noodle dish with carrots, celery, and chicken.

After my crying spell, class today went a lot slower.  Though I did still have my moment of getting overwhelmed.  For some reason numbers are quite difficult for me.  I never remember German numbers being quite this challenging.  All these years I've been able to count to 15 in Spanish from when I taught preschool and had both English and Spanish speaking students.  That was about the only thing I did in Spanish all day when I taught preschool, count out the number of students in attendance on the number chart.  I never had more than 15 students at one time.  But knowing my numbers out of order or by sight, that's another story.

This morning for the whole first part of class I finally got a chance for repetition and really getting much more comfortable with numbers.  I'm sure my teacher was bored out of her mind but this is what I'm here for, to actually learn something to the point where I can retain it, right?

Other than that, today has been very much about connecting with life back in the states.  I got to video chat with both the family I nannied for over the summer and my niece and brother.  I also caught up with my mom and had my weekly 3-way skype conference call with my book club.  Still haven't been able to connect with good ole Dad since arriving in Xela though.