The flight to Argentina was the most memorable flight I’ve had in my entire life. The cancellation pushed the flight to the weekend. I had to fly to Houston at 3:15 but Houston is a different time zone so the flight felt like I was on it forever. The flight to Argentina was scheduled for 10:20 so I sat reviewing my Spanish by watching one the newest introduced novelas by the name of “Silvana Sin Lana” Senora Solis introduced the show to me a few weeks ago and I’m already almost done. Finally around 9:30 just as we were lining up to board the plane I saw an abundance of familiar faces. I sat with them waiting for them to start boarding group 3 when we received a message that our flight would be delayed an hour due to technical issues on the plane that needed to be fixed. As it got closer to 11:45 I received another text saying our flight would be delayed an additional hour pushing our flight to 12:30. As we started to approach 12:30 I am sure you can guess what happened next… our flight was delayed till 1:30. Luckily this was the last delay and we were on the plane by 1:30. My seat was all the way in the back next to two nice men one from Argentina. I enjoyed sitting next to him he was very interested in my work experience and my connection to Argentina. He asked me where I was from and when I told him I was from
North Carolina he was in complete shock. He said “ there is no way, where are your parents from” and I knew where he was going. When I told him my family is from panama he was able to put two and two together. He was pretty knowledgeable about educational systems in Panama and he suggested that I keep in mind my family hometown when deciding places to teach.
When we finally arrived in Buenos Aires, My friend Mica was waiting for me at the door exit door. After going to the “AutoMac” for food she took me to Quilmes High School so I could finally begin my journey. I met with Pauni, the director of Quilmes Highschool and with many other teachers who i would be working with throughout the week. I attended two classes both of them were Literature Classes. One was led by Fer Vargas and she allowed me to introduce myself. The children we reading a book about two people who are stuck at their school due to a war in the summer. They asked me if the United States has classes during the summer. This led into a very long conversation about discovery term and the US history course at Cary Academy.
My next class was with a teacher named Amaya. I led the class by introducing myself and explaining why I was back at Quilmes Highschool. I explained what my work experience purpose was and they were amazed at my ideas. Many of them were excited because they expressed that they wished they had someone at Quilmes that could help aid them in applying for university and such. Their remarks made me extremely happy because I was hoping it was a needed profession. The class was discussing a poem “ a melded wall”. We all sat down and took stones representing the wall and passed them around talking about what the wall represented in our lives. Their ideas were extremely insightful. We also made a poster where we wrote down words in English about ways the poem represents different things. This class was very unified. The students were attentive and worked together to find words that expressed their feelings. It amazed me how the class was a English class but Spanish would be tossed around frequently it was very cool. The teacher was moving around the room and on the floor drawing and writing with them. It was all a group effort.