Teacher, Teacher

I found out yesterday that there was to be a meeting for the English Department today at 4:30. For here, that is advanced notice. Anyway, since all classes have started now, today was my longest day. I have class 8 -12 and 2:30-4:30. Needless to say, I decided to wear flats today – my zebra striped ones to be exact! Hey, a girl’s got to have a little fashion even if she’s living in a developing country.

I came back to my apartment at lunch and had an email from some new friends, the young couple here in town that I have seen a couple of times at the E.C.’s around town. Turns out they are part of the family as well and are from S.C. Pretty small world! We made plans to hang out this Friday at the footwash. We may even start a weekly book study, which would be nice. Sometimes it gets pretty lonely here with no one to talk to.

I think I’m a bit of a paradox – I’m a co-dependent hermit. I really need to have people around to talk to, but I also need my “me time”. I digress.

During my afternoon classes, I met another one of our translators, Angelina. I was so excited to see her, and she was speechless after she came running around the building to see me. I guess she had noticed me in the classroom beforehand and came to visit at break. We didn’t have much time to catch up, but hopefully we can catch up another time.

At the meeting, we found out that it was in honor of Teacher’s Day. This phenomenon was rather lost on me since it is only the third day of class and I haven’t even met all of my students yet. Anyway, I suppose it is like Teacher Appreciation Week back home, except it is a bigger deal here. More or less, once you get beyond second grade in America, you can forget about Teacher Appreciation Week. So we all sat around in a circle and talked about how we don’t have this “holiday” back in the west. A lady from the propaganda (P.R.) department was there to interview us, but since I haven’t taught here before I didn’t have much to offer. At least I got some chocolates and flowers out of it all! Plus, there is a hike and a dinner tomorrow. I said that I’d pass on the hike but I’d be there for the dinner. The highlight of the meeting, however, was catching up with Lois, yet another of the translators we had last summer. (There were 13 of us, so there are a lot of translators!)

As I continue to meet my students (and name them) please keep in mind the opportunities that might arise as I develop relationships with them.