Realtors for Ventura | Oxnard | Camarillo

So now I had temp power back on my laptop (ordered a new adapter on Amazon, had it shipped to our son Marc in Honolulu, who’s shipped it to us with some other stuff).  But I needed to figure out why we weren’t getting wi-fi any more in our room – we’d never had problems before, but heavy rains from the rainy season have kicked in.

In Mexico City, “stuff” for shopping is frequently clustered together, ie, plumbing shops will be clustered along several blocks, women’s shops will be clustered along several blocks, etc.  It’s actually fun to discover that ‘this block’ is student supplies (arts and crafts) and so on.

So I asked Nico (our great Casa house manager) where I should go to look for computer “stuff”.  He showed me on a map and off I went looking for that cluster, taking the great MetroBus system here in DF (Distrito Federal – the capital of Mexico; like Washington, District of Columbia – DC).

I got down in the general area and found lots of music shops, cell phone shops, but nothing that really looked like computer shops – until I was directed to #14 Republica del Salvador.  Jackpot!

But the entrance was, to put it politely, unspectacular – just a relatively narrow door for what I discovered inside.

When I walked in (and walked and walked), I discovered this “tunnel” or corridor of shops actually went from block to block (Salvador to Uruguay) and there were multiple tunnels on at least 3 floors.  The place is huge inside!

My simple goal was to look for a Range Extender – a device to capture the weak signal from the Casa’s router and act as an amplifier for our room.

But this wasn’t going to be so easy…

If you click on the image of the door for a bigger, more detailed look, you’ll see a man standing inside an empty stall (drinking a soda).  That’s generally the size of the stalls and maybe the stalls are about 10 feet deep at the most.  But there are ‘millions’ of these stalls in the complex and it seems each has a barker or two who call out to you (Amigo!) and want to hand you flyers, etc.

I quickly realized this wasn’t going to be like shopping at Best Buy.  I first needed to scope out the place, get my bearings, figure out how the shops were ‘clustered’ (if at all).

I’m pretty good with my mental GPS but it didn’t take long before I was dis-oriented.  All the shops looked alike – but the place was fascinating.  I further discovered that other corridors went out into a third street (Central) which further complicated my orientation.

Ultimately, it took a couple of trips down there but I found a TP-Link brand range extender that I set up this 4th of July weekend and it works great – we’re back in business again!

For the past couple of weeks I’ve struggled with a balky power adapter and wi-fi issues here at the Casa.

On the day before my last huge assessed teaching class (TP8 for those familiar with CELTA) my computer started going dead.  Huh?  What’s the problem?  I’ve got it plugged in…

When I started playing with the connections, I discovered that because I’d been wrapping and re-wrapping the cables around the adapter box, the wire coming out of the adapter had become frayed internally –but I couldn’t tell just by looking at it.  I fiddled with it until it connected then tried to duct tape it tight. It worked just long enough for me to finish CELTA the next day.  Unbelievable – it was sooo close to failing me when I needed it the most!

After a good CELTA finish, Leslie and I were tired and didn’t do much for a couple of days – but I still needed to check emails, etc.  Now my adapter really started getting cranky.  I couldn’t get it to connect.  But if I fiddled with it awhile, I’d find just the right spot and I’d carefully put it down to maintain that connection on my desk.  Then my battery wouldn’t hold a charge for long so I had to keep it plugged in…

That solution lasted for a bit but then it became virtually impossible to keep it connected, so I decided I had nothing to loose and decided on surgery.  I carefully cut into the cable to see how it was made, discovered there was an inner wire sheathed in insulation and an outer stranded type wire that had separated.  I discovered I could make a good connection if I sharply bent the wire and held the frayed strands together – but how to hold it together “permanently”?

Leslie had the solution.  She had a tweezer that clamped.  Voila – back in business again!  (But now, because of heavy rains from the start of rainy season, we had no wi-fi in our room…).

I knew well before hand it would be insane. I’d read blogs of grown women weeping in pure frustration the second week – for our class it was also true. It’s hard to describe the mental intensity and tenacity that’s required.  I almost walked out early…

What saved me was switching from the non-stop 4 week ‘intensive’ class to the weekend only ‘extensive’ class for working candidates (mostly teachers in our class).  See my earlier blog post.

CELTA (created and assessed by Cambridge University) involves teaching “only” 8 assessed classes – but the bar rapidly goes up and candidates are expected to substantially improve with each assessed “TP” (Teaching Practice).

One constant theme is less TTT (Teacher Talking Time).  In this concept, the days of a teacher lecturing students are over.  The teacher is expected to elicit through activities, visuals, use of the whiteboard, etc, everything necessary to accomplish the ‘main aim’ and ‘sub-aims’ of that particular lesson – easier said than done!  The intent is for the students to do all the talking, and especially among themselves.

Ultimately, I started scripting my lessons (no more extemporaneous teaching/talking) – just stick to my script like a Hollywood movie.

Here’s my ‘official’ TP8 lesson plan (a pdf file about 20 pages long) submitted to my tutor – who assesses and follows along for the 1 hour class (before real English language learning students).  I loved the teaching part – but what drove me crazy was thinking about and filling out the first 4 sections for every TP.

If you look (Section 2), you’ll see I gave as one of my personal goals that I’d practice my lesson plan at least 4 times – I must’ve done it at least half a dozen times up in our Casa’s conference room.

For this last TP I could choose anything to teach so my main aim was to teach imperatives – under the guise of practicing giving and asking directions.  My students were all beginner English learners so everything had to be very basic communication and practice.

There are 2 basic ‘productive’ (output) skills – writing and speaking. My primary productive skill work would be speaking, but I also had a prep (‘scaffold’ exercise) writing activity.

But did I use my ‘official’ lesson plan during class?  No!  Here’s the real lesson plan I used (pdf color file).

So, what did I learn from my last TP?  First, in checking for comprehension of my marker sentences, my learners didn’t understand the words ‘command’ and  ‘must’ so I had to go off script to clarify – not good! We are pushed to ‘grade our language’ to the level of our learners and I blew it on that score – I should have known better, but that’s what the training’s all about – to learn from our mistakes.

But the lesson went great (IMHO) and it was hard to stop the students during my last role play activity when my 60 minutes was up because they were really into it.

Finally, what was my tutor’s final assessment of my performance?  Check it out!  Actually, this first page is a summary because he makes comments, suggestions, etc, all through the lesson plan as it progresses.

But I went from being close to walking to finishing strong!  And so did Leslie!

Now we get to continue our “next steps” in life – learning Spanish!

One year later ….

Our journey of our ‘next steps’ for this stage of our lives has been over three stages for the past year:

June – December 2013: We leased up our house and our office for several years. Three huge garage sales later and many trips to the Salvation Army, we loaded the most essential and sentimental stuff into a 16 foot container that’s being stored in Ventura.

December – March 2014: We said goodbye to our friends in Ventura and had the wonderful opportunity to stay with my brother, Toby and his wife, Judy in their spacious home north of Sacramento in the foothills of the Sierras.

March 1, 2014: Our daughter, Michelle married a wonderful Christian man, Jim, whom we love, in the San Francisco area. We also had a great visit with our son, Marc who flew in from Honolulu for the wedding.

March 2, 2014: Don and I flew out of SFO on the red eye for Mexico City to attend a CELTA course put on by Cambridge University, learning how to teach English as a second language. We’ve been staying in a Quaker/Friends guest house/hostel called Casa de los Amigos.

We’ve had a fabulous time here meeting many people from all over the world and hearing their stories and hopefully touching a few lives as well. The Casa is involved with helping people who have come here with their immigration needs as refugees. We’ve made good friends with a young man from Cameroon and a couple and her cousin from Iran. Others we’ve met who’ve come through the Casa for a few days or a week are from the States, Canada, France, England, Australia, Germany, Nigeria, and the country of Georgia. Our lives have been enriched.

June 14, 2014: Don and I successfully completed our CELTA course!! Yay!! It’s been excellent but brutal. To have completed the CELTA course is something to be proud of. Our tutors were master teachers. We’ve learned so much. We’ve said we’d love to (tongue in cheek) take the course again for the excellent teaching and apply what we’ve learned.

This week has been good to catch up on naps and other stuff and get my batteries recharged.

We plan to take some short trips to towns we’ve heard a lot about: Puebla – two hours south of here and Queretaro and Guanajuato – two hours north of here.

Our next big step will be learning Spanish in an intensive setting (thanks for Rosetta Stone Michelle and Jim!) and we’re looking into several options that are available.

We’ll keep you posted …

Today was the first “real” Sunday we’ve had off since coming to Mexico.  We were off last Sunday but so exhausted from school we simply slept in.

We knew we wanted to celebrate the risen Christ with fellow believers on Easter Sunday, so we googled “english speaking church” and found the Union Evangelical Church on the south end of town.  No problem – we’d simply take the Metro south (to the end of the line) and then a short taxi ride to church.

Didn’t quite happen!  We got to the end of the line okay, but we were correctly judged to be gringos and got the “scenic” tour to church! Instead of heading south, we got to see new skylines of Mexico, around the castle in Chapultepec park and then a lovely drive back down south on the beautiful Paseo de la Reforma.  It only took 45 minutes (and 150 pesos – about $12) but we’d given ourselves plenty of time and everything worked out fine.

Take a look at our google map to see our little “detour”!

We discovered the Union Church was started in 1873.  It’s a beautiful church and Pastor Lance eloquently stated the essence of the Christian faith in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

By the way – it only took a 10 – 12 minute ride back to the Metro station!