Our national symbol

Drinking mate with friends or family is Argentina's oldest and most famous social practice. You can drink it during breakfast, lunch, tea or dinner time, no matter how old you are. For me, chatting to someone while drinking some mates is a unique opportunity to share a special moment with that person. This is the symbolical aspect of mate, and I think this is the main reason why this custom has survived over and over the years in our society. But of course you can drink mate on your own! I got used to doing this while studying at Teacher Training. Mate has become a really pleasant company to me during these years.
As most of us as Argentinians should know, this infusion is prepared by steeping dry leaves (and twigs) of yerba mate in hot water, rather than in boiling water-the flavour becomes really bitter if it is prepared with boling water, the water temperature should be between 71–82 °C-.
Even though I knew that mate was also typical from Uruguay, I have to admit I didn't know people in Paraguay, Chile, eastern Bolivia and southern and western Brazil also drank mate. But now I realize that yerba mate is original from this area in South America-the North of Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia and Southern Brazil-.
Also in Paraguay, Brazil and of course in Argentina, when the temperature is 30ºC or higher in summer, we drink tereré, a cold beverage that we usually prepare with cold fruit juice-because it's sweeter than just using cold water-and which I personally enjoy drinking near the swimming pool with friends while sunbathing.
As you can see, mate is with us everywhere at any time, no matter the season of the year or the moment of the day!
And you can accompany it with either sweet or savoury food-delicious facturas, cake or cookies or some salame, cheese and ham in a wonderful "picadita".

So near the end...

Today, as I have finished with my practice period in the workshop, I'd like to share with you a personal and critical reflection I wrote about this subject, which also applies to all practical subjects in our curriculum.
First of all, I think both the practice period and the topic of assessment were really useful to us as teachers-to-be. Even though most of us may have some teaching experience in institutes or as private teachers, facing thirty students in a big classroom in a public school is definitely another story. I profited from this opportunity a lot, and now I feel I am more prepared to work in a school than I was at the beginning of the year, even though this is my third year working in a private institute with different age groups. Designing an integrative test bearing in mind the characteristics of a certain group of students and preparing activities to evaluate everything we had done during the practice keeping the same context was totally new for me, and therefore has been a practical as well as a valuable experience.
As regards the lessons we observed during the first part of the year, I believe this can be an enriching experience as well as a waste of time. Some form teachers were really helpful and taught wonderful lessons but some others did not like the idea of being observed- I do not blame them for that- and after the class finished I had the feeling that we were a burden for her and for her students and that they were not working in their usual way.
Finally, I would like to make a comment on the plans. In my view, they are the best way to learn how to organize a lesson, in spite of the fact that when we become teachers we no longer plan our classes in such a detailed way. However, during this year I felt that some of the activities we had planned were wrong for the teacher or needed improvement and, in some cases, I really disagreed with the corrections, sometimes because I couldn’t see what was wrong or sometimes because I thought the corrections were unnecessary.
Girls, to tell you the truth, I tried to be as honest as I could and also to include most of the aspects and topics we had dealt with during this year. I believe this kind of subjects has give to most of us all those practical details and pieces of advice that so many theoretical subjects sometimes fail to give.