We are Seeing Progress in our Students!

Thursday, January 20, 2011

**Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina **

Written by: Volunteer Arturo

As we descended from the van at the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina Language Center, the director, Gorki, was there to welcome us just has he has every single day we have been working there.

Early in our day we asked that our lunch routine change a little. La Duna and El Gato are the two restaurants on campus. Per our ever so polite request, the administration happily agreed to allow us to dine exclusively at El Gato. We are now able to order anything from the menu. At our al fresco lunch table today various members of our group enjoyed fruit salads with and without yogurt and honey, lettuce and vegetable salad, quinoa soup, pasta, Peruvian dishes such as Papa a la Huancaina and arroz con pollo, as well as ham and cheese sandwiches. We were somewhat surprised to learn that all of the other Global Volunteers teams preferred the La Duna Restaurant that we chose to delete from our repertoire.

In terms of our classes, we are all seeing progress in our students and are thoroughly enjoying our interactions with them. At the beginning level, on the first day this week the students didn’t understand the teachers’ humor and didn’t laugh when they should have. On the second day, the students laughed a little. And today the laughed a lot, especially when it came to the backside of the Hokey Pokey. A true sign of progress! Attendance today at this level was 7 to 8 students. At the intermediate level today students were each given two postcards of Minnesota and were asked to describe them. This generated a lot of language and many questions about the state. There was also instruction in phonics. 16 to 17 students attended the intermediate conversation class and 6 attended the intermediate language skills class.

At the advanced level much of the class was spent reading an article from “Science News” and discussing the impact of global warming on biodiversity in the South American tropical rain forests. Work on idioms, phrasal verbs, and pronunciation continues. 6 students attended the advanced conversation class and 5 attended theadvanced language skills class.

We agreed that all of us would end our last class at 4.45 PM so as to depart promptly at 5 PM. Our tour of the campus is scheduled for 10 AM to noon next Tuesday. We will be picked up in a van upon our arrival. The official letter of permission with the required seal and signatures authorizing our tour of the campus is being processed now. Ours will be an "official" visit.