I must begin my blog by first giving out gold starts to Callie Hanau and Jordan Mroziak. Callie lifted my spirits yesterday when she sent me the most hilarious card with King Kong on it (just to give you an idea...it involves a water gun), and today Jordan lifted my spirits by sending me my extra clothing and my camera so now I can take fancy people pictures instead of just pictures with my iphone. So, mad props to them for making me smile!
The weather has been just spectacular for the fast few days! We have gotten no rain during the days and the temperature has been that perfect fall day where its crisp outside but you don't need anything more than a sweater or sweatshirt to keep warm. The unexpected amount of beautiful weather has put the Irish folk into a particularly good mood, so everyone has been warm, positive, and incredibly hopeful about life for the past few days.
The Gaelic Football match was INCREDIBLE! I had such a lovely time, and it was unlike any experience that I have ever had previously. The game was held in Croke Park, which is where all Gaelic Sports are held. This means that the "all Ireland" football tournament is held here, along with the "all Ireland" hurling tournament. If I did not explain previously, let me back track by mentioning that football in Ireland actually refers to Gaelic football, and soccer is used for...soccer. Gaelic football is a mixture of soccer, basketball, ultimate Frisbee...and a lot of other things.
Just follow this YouTube link for a better idea of the game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEAbWrdB9XU
The final is this weekend and it is sure to be a fast paced match with a lot of screaming fans. Miss Alyssa Newberry noted that it seems as if I am becoming quite a sports fan...and I guess that's true. The difference is that here you don't really have much of an option, especially because EVERYONE here takes part in sports and it would be challenging to constantly tell people how I don't follow sports...So I have turned a new leaf on organized sporting events!
As for teaching...yesterday was rough. I fell apart in my lesson when I realized that I did not have the tools to teach these boys in a way they understand. I have known solfege for so long at this point and have been able to easily communicate through musical terms for so long that I don't remember how to teach music to students that don't read music and haven't been aurally trained very well. After yesterday, I went back to the drawing board and decided that I would start from scratch with these boys. Therefore, today I taught them do-mi-sol and talked about how "do" is home, so anytime we are lost, we just have to hear "do". This seemed to really help the boys improve, even just in one lesson! For the first time today, I saw them realize how great they can sound when they really focus and concentrate on the music. I still messed up and I know that I will have more failure days ahead, but for today...I leave satisfied that maybe I taught someone a skill that before today they didn't have.
Below are some pictures I took at Hubert park this afternoon:
No comments:
Post a Comment