Elementary , High Schools and Universities all in two days!

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I can’t believe we are only two days away from heading back to Montevideo and being done with our time here insulting. Every day is unique and different from the day before and continues to offer solid insights into the unbelievably long hours of work teachers here in Uruguay tackle on a daily basis.

The last two days have provided a unique perspective of the secondary and university educational systems for students ages 16 and older. Before we headed into the secondary education world, however, we started with the most wonderful and sweet experience at another rural school with our host teacher Ines.

The student’s normally goes to school from 10 until two, but they came an hour early so that they could prepare us a very special breakfast. They made us some delicious omelettes with some bacon. This is some thing that they themselves rarely have. The special treat with our breakfast or two types of hot sauce that the teacher brought from her own home. None of the children have never seen these bottles of hot sauce, nor have they ever tasted it before so our breakfast became a challenge of who could and who could not handle the “pica” of the hot sauce. I was definitely in the category of could not. 😊 With full stomachs, we then moved on to some academics by helping the students respond to some letters they received from our students. Very moment of the time at Ines’s school was inspiring. What you should know is that there were 25 students ages 3-12 with Ines as the only teacher.  The good news is that just a few months ago, however, she has been gifted with an assistant teacher to help her with the youngest ones.

Then - probably the most important lesson for anyone who plans on acclimating to Uruguayan culture… how to make MATE!!

The afternoon was SO great with us Fulbrighters giving presentations on our own schools and states with  the most wonderful student teachers attending CERP- the training school for teachers. These nine young adults are guided by Virginia, a Uruguayan, Fulbright scholar, and her amazing team of professors. We celebrated their achievements and movement towards being a certified teacher, with some alfajores, the regional cookie with dulce de leche! Not only were these the best of the alfajores I’ve had since I’ve been here, they were made by one of the students, named Paula! She owns her own baking business in addition to working hard to becoming a teacher.

Today, Tuesday, we visited a high school English class with students ages 17 and 18 and equivalent to our seniors. Kathleen, Denisha, Shawna, Allie and I Helped the Uruguayan seniors respond in English to the postcards that my students had written to them in Spanish. They were a lively and engaging time and I’ll have many more stories to tell about this in person.

An unexpected highlight of the day was taking a few hours to go to one of the local Hot Springs, and discovering that we were the only people at the entire facility! So we basically had any and every pool to ourselves. We all felt like royalty!


















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