First thing in the day was breakfast. I was left awed at the range of different options I had for breakfast; baked potatoes, pancakes with maple syrup, all kinds of fruit drinks and ofcourse tea and coffee, not to forget all the fruits as well as doughnuts, muffins,bread and butter, eggs and cereals. It was just too much to choose from. I ended up having pancakes, potatoes, banana and a drink, all my breakfast favorites!! Then, we walked to the American Councils building which is a short walk from the hotel. That's where we had all our sessions. Getting a taste of DC after about seven months felt like a totally new experience. I loved walking in that cool and breezy morning air and looking at all those colorful and not-so-tall buildings. I had my camera with me( which I managed to borrow from my high school after a lot of pleading) and so I was able to take some really nice pictures. I not only took the pictures of the city but also my fellow students as I know everybody likes their picture taken.
Once we reached American councils, we started in full swing with the Workshop material. The day started with a lecture from the US State Department's Youth Programs Staff who told us about the different resources we could use for teaching English. They showed us their their website called Amrican english where we can find a lot of relevant material, acitivites and games, all related to teaching English. Whitney Mirts, one of the staff, also talked about how we could get help with our teaching projects in our own home countries from Regional English Language Officers(RELOs). It was really interesting to know about that. Later, we had a session on English Language Teaching basics, which was conducted by Kyle, who seems to be the head of the program. He taught us about experiential learning i.e making students learn stuff by having them experience it. As an example, he asked some people to come up front and taught them some basic spanish sentences with the help of signs and his own speaking in Spanish. Instead of telling the students that they were going to learn some Spanish sentences, he actually had the students get that experience which I believe was more effective. We had a couple other sessions on topics like lesson planning and encouraging communication in a classroom. Lesson planning, I beleive was really helpful for me as it really is an important part of teaching; before teachers teach something, they have to know how they're going to teach it.
The sessions went on for quite a while. We had some bathroom and water breaks whiich was good. Also, one thing that I forgot to mention is that during lunch time, all of the students got to meet the volunteers who evaluate applications for this workshop and for the exchage programs as a whole. It was really nice talking to them and knowing why they were so interested in volunteering thier time to exchange programs.
Guess what the funnest part of the day was... No wonder, it was the trips; trips to Thomas Jefferson Memorial and Lincoln Memorial and Dr King's Memorial and let's all never forget the White House. It was cold and it was night time which really added to the atmosphere. A volunteer named Tim gave us a brief intro behind the 3 personalites and I thought that was pretty useful. I no doubt took a lot of pictures as they were all great palces!!!
For dinner, I had rice and Indian style chicken from a nearby retaurant which was delicious. Plus, the amazing company of my exchange studmet friends really brightened things up. I atill can't forget all that Bollywood singing of the songs that we did during the bus rides. The day ended on a really high note and I am so very pumped for tomorrow( not to mention that I also think it's gonna be tiring).
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