Guesting and other delights

21:00 24 September 2008

My first days as an English teacher have been overall a big success. While I was supposed to have an observation period of two weeks, my counterpart asked me today if I felt ready and I said that I did, the result was that today I team-taught for the first time and that tomorrow I will be teaching two classes by myself. I am teaching nineteen classes a week with various forms (grades). My youngest students are fifth formers (about 10 or 11 years old) and my oldest are tenth formers (about 15 or 16 years old). Each class started with several minutes where they could play “Ask the American” where I got a wide variety of questions, of course the typical ones about my family and marital status, but also such interesting ones as the languages I knew, whether America was “clean” and what kind of problems we have in American (I answered with childhood obesity and hurricanes). It’s really adorable as the kids address me with their specially accented version of “Mister Jonathan”.

Today I went guesting at a student’s house. She is a tenth former and has been friends with a lot of the volunteers in the region. She really wanted to host a volunteer and apparently there was going to be another volunteer in my village at her house, but P.C. changed their minds at the last minute. It’s funny, because she kept subtly implying that I should leave my host family and move in with them. While I love my host family now, I have to admit- having a legit laundry machine would be really nice. I don’t have any plans of moving though.