Life in Ponorogo is going well. Everyone I meet is incredibly friendly. I found out, to my surprise, that I will be teaching elementary school students as well as high school and university. I'm ok with this cause the kids are adorable, as long as I can keep my schedule under 20 hours of teaching time a week (which might be a struggle, i am negotiating now and they seem to understand.) VIA has a rule that we should only be teaching 20 hours.
The elementary school kids are somewhat terrified of me. The brave ones drag their friends, literally kicking and screaming, to try to get them to shake hands with me. They hide behind doorways and stare. It's really funny. The teachers are amazing, everyone is really nice and I think I will have many friends. Many of them only speak a little English. Even some of the English teachers aren't exactly fluent. I had a look through the high school text book and it was just full of mistakes and really awkward language. The teachers are really excited to have me here to help them with their language, especially their pronunciation. There is one girl, Hanna, who I think was officially given the job as my babysitter. She is sweet and doesn't seem to mind, I hope! She is teaching me to ride motorbike in a quite little stadium thing and it's really fun. And yes, I'm being careful : ) I don't think I'll be comfortable actually driving a motorbike on the streets anytime soon, but that's ok. I was ridiculously bad my first lesson, but very improved for the second.
Tomorrow is my first day of real teaching. It's Elementary and I will be team teaching so I'm not so nervous. I'm on my own for the university though and they don't even have a textbook (they thought I would have one?) so that will be interesting.
I am not in my permanent home yet. I am staying with the director of the school and his wife. They are awesome but keep to themselves much of the time. I will live here for about 1 month. I get the impression that the school bought a house specifically for me and any vols that may follow me, but it is not done being renovated yet.
I went to Surabaya (the 2nd largest city in Indonesia) over the weekend with a teacher from the school and his wife and mother. We stayed in a really nice hotel with a sit down toilet and hot shower! It was pretty awesome. We went to the zoo and it was horribly depressing. Orangutans and chimpanzees in these tiny tiny cages looking completely miserable.
My stomach has been pretty upset the last couple days so I think tomorrow i am going to start taking the Cipro (spelling?) I brought from home.
I guess that's it, I will have more to update after I start teaching.
2 comments:
A motor bike? You can't even ride a regular bike! :-)
I enjoy listening to you talk about the children. Being scared of you is almost impossible to imagine.
Use some on-line materials to teach, if you have access to a printer you can print things off. Just make a small set of copies to use in the classroom. You'll be amazed at the on-line teaching materials you can find.
Sorry to hear about your stomach, if the cipro doesn't help see a Dr. it could also be parasitic and antibiotics won't work for that.
See if you can order the computer camara set up for Skyp (spelling?) that will be the cheapest way to actually talk to you and we will be able to see each other too.
Keep writing and don't forget to journal in addition to your blog.
mom, i think a motorbike is easier than a regular bike!
I actually do not have access to a printer, at least not right now. It's a problem because I can't really use any resources in the classroom. I've basically got a white board, although there are not always markers.
My stomach feels a lot better, the Cipro helped, so that's good.
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