Heya folks, it’s Alex, back to tell you more about our time in Panama.
Our first half in Panama teaching English was some of my favorite time on the World Race to date. I wouldn’t have thought it before leaving home, but helping the 1st-4th grade English teacher was an absolute joy. The kids might have a lot of unspent energy, but they also have a lot of love. They were, if anything, less shy than I would expect young children to be with multiple foreign, non-Spanish speaking strangers visiting their class each day. I think their experience with us helped them realize that there is a real-world application to knowing another language. It was a fun experience for us and them to try to learn to communicate with each other; us knowing a small amount of Spanish from previous months in the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica, and them knowing a tiny amount of English from their lessons.
Our time together also taught me something new about myself; I think I actually love kids. I usually feel strange interacting with younger children. Playing with kids usually feels like humoring or even patronizing to me, even though I know that’s not how they experience it. And what if the kid isn’t behaving well? How do the kid’s parents feel about me interacting with their child on a disciplinary level?
It was different in the classroom; we were the teacher’s assistants and learning was the primary focus during most of our time together. And somehow the language barrier made me more comfortable. They could chat with me about whatever they wanted and all I could do half the time was reply “… Si!” or “Yo no se.” Likewise, I could say whatever I thought about what they were doing without them interpreting it negatively (since they couldn’t interpret it at all!). So conversation was both highly limited and very comfortable.
Additionally, a lot of the kids only took a day or two to warm up to us before becoming very affectionate. Almost immediately our visits were the highlight of their day, and they love giving hugs. Some of you might not know this about me, but physical touch is one of my primary love languages, and I too love hugs. So by the end of our time together there were always lines for getting hugs, and I was all too happy to oblige. It also doesn’t hurt that they are easily the cutest kids I’ve ever seen in my life.
The truth is, by the time we had to go, I didn’t want to. There were two or three kids that had really sought me out (probably because I wasn’t very strict with them) or just grabbed my attention, and I was really falling in love with these kiddos. On the last day the whole school (~260 students) went to a museum on a field trip, with lunch in a big park after. A first grader who had picked me out as her favorite for the day spent most of the bus ride back from the park falling asleep on my knee, clutching my arm. I’m usually the last person in the world to say that good-byes are hard, but that one was. No one on the race so far has been as visibly sad to see me go as this little girl, and it melted my heart.
