First Day of Training

This morning I didn't hear my alarm go off, but luckily one of my roommates was able to wake up without one. We went to have breakfast at 7:30 in the lobby, and I have to say, these are my kind of people when it comes to breakfast. I'm not much of a breakfast eater, and apparently neither are they. I had a vanilla cream croissant with pineapple yogurt, and it was absolutely delicious.

Afterwards we walked down the down to some Villamiglia place where we received our greetings and did tons of icebreakers and games. I learned some new songs, one including lyrics about bubblegum, and did some fancy dances with lots of bootyshaking. We also played charades with partners trying to explain our flights and our worst dates, and during mine I was able to pull out the MJ moonwalk. It was baller.

For lunch we walked down the road to this beautiful recreation center. They served fresh salad, potatoes, risotto, and pane. It really wasn't all that fancy, but tasted soooo good because everything was fresh. The salads taste so much better here than they do back at home. The rest of the day we played more games as if we were the children and the staff members were the tutors, just so we can get an idea about how we should go about teaching. I probably knew this before, but I was reminded that hand gestures are extremely helpful, as well as repetition and speaking slowly.

Dinner was scheduled for 8:30pm at a restaurant about a mile from my hotel. It was such a gorgeous walk, and I came to find out that the restaurant was literally sitting right on the beach! I threw my purse down on the chair and immediately ran into the soft sand and dipped my feet into the brisk water. Apparently the water here is very dirty to the natives, but it was cleaner than the Atlantic at Rehoboth, so It looked wonderful to me. We took pictures with some of the other tutors, and it was simply a marvelous evening. I grabbed some of everything for dinner: penne pasta in a mix of marinara and pesto, potatoes with sausage, salad, eggplant with marinara, chips (aka french fries), a piece of turkey (i think), two mushy green squares of goodness, and something that I think was a pesto ball. For drinks I had sparkling water and white wine, and followed the meal with cappuccino and gelato. The cappuccino was not included in our free meal, so I had to go up to the bar and order it. In Italian. Even I was impressed with myself.

This place is absolutely amazing and I feel so at home here. I remember a lot of you told me to have fun, but make sure I come back to the US at the end of the summer...Might not be able to keep that promise after all. :-P