The top picture does not clearly show
how poor and hot this side of the river is. Again I am struck by how God's most beautiful gifts are for all his children, including the very poor.
There's the bridge, which they tell me gets repaired every 2 years but is always damaged and they tell me the contractors taking government money make a good thing of it.
The bottom picture is of the base which is well kept with an army of recruits raking and sweeping every day. (In the states 2 contractors with riding mowers and leaf blowers would do it all, and charge big $$$)
So I go down to teach English for the going rate in Colombia (which is $10 per hour) but they give me free room and meals and I am making a great contribution. The pilots are getting ready for Red Flag at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, the most famous war games in the world. They are training daily in their aircraft, but they need English to be in Red Flag. And not just tourist English, mind you, they must talk on the radio and understand the briefing given by a Texan, perhaps.
I kept asking for the English course books I know they have on the base, but the pilots use evasive tactics (those books are boring) and so I do everything out of my head for 7 hours a day all week.
You know me, a maze game for standard reductions (that's can't, won't you'll) and pieces of paper to arrange in columns for describing damage, and writing your agenda and all that kind of thing. We learned vocabulary and verb tenses ("please circle all the examples you can see of the past perfect" ) with articles from the internet, and talked about history and current events. They briefed a news article every day, and I called them every night on their cel phones.
The first day was agony for all of us, but then they started to take off. Two of them really made such sudden progress that I am sure they had a lot of English in fragments floating around in their heads.. You make a game with tall taller tallest, and polluted more polluted most polluted and they seem to 'defragment' all these bits and pieces and take off. I make a point of never praising mediochre performance, but clearly pointing out excellent performance and they can trust my assessment.
The only thing is, the general who came to hear my report on Friday, now assumes I will come every month for a week--for free. I'm working on it.
how poor and hot this side of the river is. Again I am struck by how God's most beautiful gifts are for all his children, including the very poor.There's the bridge, which they tell me gets repaired every 2 years but is always damaged and they tell me the contractors taking government money make a good thing of it.
The bottom picture is of the base which is well kept with an army of recruits raking and sweeping every day. (In the states 2 contractors with riding mowers and leaf blowers would do it all, and charge big $$$)
So I go down to teach English for the going rate in Colombia (which is $10 per hour) but they give me free room and meals and I am making a great contribution. The pilots are getting ready for Red Flag at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, the most famous war games in the world. They are training daily in their aircraft, but they need English to be in Red Flag. And not just tourist English, mind you, they must talk on the radio and understand the briefing given by a Texan, perhaps.
I kept asking for the English course books I know they have on the base, but the pilots use evasive tactics (those books are boring) and so I do everything out of my head for 7 hours a day all week.
You know me, a maze game for standard reductions (that's can't, won't you'll) and pieces of paper to arrange in columns for describing damage, and writing your agenda and all that kind of thing. We learned vocabulary and verb tenses ("please circle all the examples you can see of the past perfect" ) with articles from the internet, and talked about history and current events. They briefed a news article every day, and I called them every night on their cel phones.
The first day was agony for all of us, but then they started to take off. Two of them really made such sudden progress that I am sure they had a lot of English in fragments floating around in their heads.. You make a game with tall taller tallest, and polluted more polluted most polluted and they seem to 'defragment' all these bits and pieces and take off. I make a point of never praising mediochre performance, but clearly pointing out excellent performance and they can trust my assessment.
The only thing is, the general who came to hear my report on Friday, now assumes I will come every month for a week--for free. I'm working on it.
