Practicum!

So my practicum started on Monday. I'm in a third grade classroom at what is thought to be a bilingual school (more or less). The students have English class all morning from 745 to 1045 and then the rest of the day they have their classes in Spanish. The way the school works is there is a coteacher situation where in the morning, my mentor teacher teaches English to third graders and then at 1045 she switches to fourth grade and the teacher who was in the fourth grade classroom switches to third grade. This aspect of it makes this a bilingual school. However I was informed that its not considered fully bilingual unless the English instruction is in all subjects. As far as I can tell, its not; we only do literature and grammar stuff in the English part. Soooo is our school bilingual? I don't know. However either way I love the kids and my mentor teacher is completely awesome as well. I have a class with only 10 students (yay private school!) and they're great kids. Love em all. I'm sad I only get to be around them for 3 weeks, and one of those weeks is pretty much over! The good news is, with this practicum schedule, that I am done everyday at 11. Therefore, to kill time since we really don't have that much homework for our practicum, I walk 2 miles home everyday. Good fun. The other good news is we never have practicum on Friday! Hello 3 day weekend...oh wait...we don't know what to do here and end up bored a lot of the time (although I think this weekend may include a trip to the hot springs!).
I have now had the wonderful experience of riding the "chicken busses" from the market to my school because it is quite far from my house. Thats fun. The first day I was super scared because I didn't know where I was going or how to get there but I had to figure it out on my own, and that I did! I'm getting to know this city better and as I am doing so it seems to be shrinking, which is pretty cool.
I think thats all I have for now...OH! The first unit we're starting in on in the classroom is climbing...tooooo bad I didn't bring my gear because that would be SWEET realia. However either way I'm excited to throw a little first hand experience in there!
Hasta Luego!