Actually working...

You may have noticed a lack of posting within the past few weeks. Well, in short, The first weeks of school are hard. Really hard. I mean, it would be hard if we spoke the same language as the kids... but, damn.

Everybody is new to the system in our Kindergarten; The administration, the teachers, the students, the parents... So everyone is learning to pace themselves, what expectations to have out of each other, and generally trying to figure out what the heck is going on. There has been a lot of smiles, a lot more stress, and some tears (from the students and from the teachers) but I am mostly satisfied with my teaching experience here so far... Which is not the case with everyone (i.e. everyone else) in my department.

I am feeling pretty lucky because my partner-in-crime used to be the Head of the English Department (before they killed the department) so she has a good head on her shoulders and knows exactly what to do. I also am feeling lucky because I got the oldest set of kids and a good portion of them know enough English to understand me. The ones who don't understand me still haven't figured out that I don't understand them because I am pretty good at guessing what they're saying by their facial expressions. There's a lot of, "OOOOH, That's REALLY interesting!" and "Oh, that's so sad" coming from me now-a-days. It's not like Korea where I am losing my English speaking abilities ("Me no do, YOU do.") because they don't really understand me anyways, so I can pretty much say whatever I want.

 Most of my students are really sweet. We have a few that are rebellious, but they just need some time to get used to school and learn that they can't get everything that they want. We would be in a better situation going into the fourth week, but once I got my first 8-10 students-who-came-to-school-from-day-one trained, four new students have trickled in over the past week and a half and it's like starting over again, but worse, because these students didn't have the fun free-for-all that the first week of school was. It is frustrating getting the big cryers to stop and then having some more thrown at you. Hopefully someday we will have a day where nobody cries.

And that is all I am going into for work on this blog. I made a promise to myself to only think or do work things when I am at the school so I don't burn myself out, so the post will be fewer since we will be doing fun things less. We have a few holidays coming up and next week there may or may not be a trip to Bulgaria for bacon and beer! Let's hope we get next Friday off. We miss our sinful meats.