They Call Me White Ninja

     So here is another transportation story adventure for you all. About two weeks ago was Namibian Independence Day and I finally was able to spend an extended period of time out if my village. I was getting a little stir crazy and was running out of food, so it was just time. Now getting in and out of Schlip is difficult. Most people here have vehicles however with the nearest town being 100km away, its not common that they can just make a quick trip out. Normally what I have to do is ask someone about a week or more in advance if they are leaving. Plans often change by the day and vehicles fill up fast, but getting a spot quickly puts guilt on the driver to find an alternative for me in the event he changes things. Then if they are leaving when I want to go, I ask to travel with them there and back. Realistically, I could “hike” out of here, standing at the sign across from the small store and wave down the first person that drives by. Its getting back that is a problem. Most people have it pretty nice where their village is between 3 and 10km from a tarred road so worse comes to worse, they grab a ride to where their dirt road meets the tar and suck it up and walk the rest of the way. I’m not so lucky. If I try to hike to Schlip, I either have to be lucky enough to flag down someone going down my one lonely dirt road, or I get a ride 50km south to the middle of nothing and wait at my road, hoping someone will come. I have thought about trying my luck just once but the problem with living in the southern part of Namibia is that there is virtually no shade anywhere. SO not only would I be standing in direct African Tropics sun, I would be a girl by herself on the side of the freeway. Not too safe. This situation isn’t so bad, when I need to go shopping, I know I have a reliable way there and back and don’t have to worry about carrying groceries. However, it becomes very difficult when I have my own plans like attending a meeting and therefore need to find a one way.

            Long story short(er) a coworker says he can give me a ride home on Sunday no problem and when he pulled up the back of his truck (with a top on it, don’t worry) was full of about 10 kids and all their luggage. He tells me to sit in the front but I see there is already an older woman there who works at the hostel and her granddaughter. Her daughter who is somewhere around my age, was going to ride in the back now with all the kids. Okay now here’s the thing about sitting in the cabs of trucks like these… most of the time, since I am a guest I am offered a seat in the front cab. More times than not, this is the middle (excuse my French) bitch seat. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if all the trucks here weren’t manual because I then wouldn’t find myself squeezed next to or on top of someone I probably don’t know as my thunder thighs just constantly get in the way of switching gears.

            So I am faced with a choice, squeeze next to this lady and her granddaughter or in the back of a truck with my hormonal teenage students. I decided boogers and slobber weren’t worth it and I kinda missed my kids after not seeing them over the long weekend. Red flags should have gone up in my mind when half of them didn’t want me back there, one of them was my biggest trouble maker, but one of my favorites did sacrifice his seat on the China Shop mattress for a slightly less comfortable package of toilet paper for me.

            I quickly found out that the reason why most of these kids didn’t want me in the back was because they all wanted to finish smoking their packs before reaching the school grounds. The teacher driving was a smoker so the smell from the back would have gone unnoticed if it wouldn’t have been for Ms. Riley.  I just try to reason with them that they are going to have to stop eventually, its bad for everyone else back here and they are all 16 and 17 and essentially killing themselves. When that didn’t work, I told them I was allergic to smoke and that my throat would close up and I would die if they tried. Well the teacher in the front quickly lit up and Ms. Riley was unphased and fine so that gave the kids the go ahead and try. Now, I have many stories of how these kids everyday try to outsmart me and some of them probably do but many do not. These guys right in front of me decide they’re going to light up under a blanket. Hormonal teenage boys and girls under a blanket to hide something from their teacher only screams trouble, but apparently they didn’t know that. I didn’t want to go into teacher witch mode, there really was nothing I could do but next thing I know the whole back of the truck is filled with smoke because one of the kids opened up the blanket and let it all out. At first I thought the blanket was on fire and flipped out but they were all laughing and coughing, so I knew they were fine. Still I told them that was it, we were all going to die and they could finish the one cigarette they had going but had to be done. I have never seen so many kids rush at the last bit of a cigarette. You’d think it was a drop of water on a deserted island. My one trouble maker did tell me though that he felt bad smoking in front of me because he felt like he was disrespecting me. My heart fluttered a little bit even if he took five of the deepest drags in a row I have ever seen. This heart fluttering also didn’t last long.

            So now that this one kid isn’t smoking anymore, he now begins trying to kiss each of the girls. Now we were all in high school once, everyone is hormonal, and there is always that one annoying kid that just wants to kiss every girl and I was stuck with that guy in the back of a truck, thankfully not as one of the girls he was trying to kiss but as the teacher now in a dilemma of how to handle the situation. I honestly don’t know which is worse. I decide I am going to ignore it, I know these kids well enough to know they wont cross any lines but when he grabs a girls face and she yells “MISS” I can’t just sit there. There’s ten of us confined in this small tiny space, there’s no where for you to go and any movement you make affects the people around you. I try to get him to stop but he knows its making the girls mad so it just makes him want to do it more. I try to restrain him in some friendly, nonviolent, professional way (if that is even possible) and big mistake because now he has my attention and wants it all.

            All my students here love my hair. It looks like Barbie’s or like a movie star’s and I just sit there like “Guys don’t touch it, I haven’t washed it in 3 days…” Many of them also do this really weird thing where they gently brush their fingers along my jaw bone as they walk by me and then they kiss their fingers. I don’t even ask, I just give them a horrified look. But anyway, now that the trouble makers has my attention it becomes “Miss let me touch your hair” “Miss let me touch your face” “Miss can you take your hair down and shake your head like the people in the movies?” Long story short I got fed up and attempted to cease the touching of the teachers hair. Remember I am in the back of a cabbed truck with 10 kids and luggage and groceries and I have no where to go. I put my hands up to easily swat away at any incoming fingers and my little trouble maker makes a game out of it testing my reflexes. Now I have had years of practice swatting away unwanted attention. I am a seasoned natural. And I took a whole 3 weeks of self defense at MSU and know that the thumb is the weakest finger, I got this. My hands up in defensive mode and my first few quick defelcts of this kids hand and break aways from his wrist grab terms me the “White Ninja”. We all broke down into laughter but this very quickly escalated into him imitating me and accompanying ninja-like noises. You know little boys when they play fight. It was all HI YEA!! WHYYYA!! YOOOWWWWW!! No just imagine this happening in the back of a truck barreling down a dirt road with a bunch of teenage Namibians. You get the picture.

            My laughter brought my defenses down and my arms were grabbed by these kids who are 3 times stronger than I. I resisted and broke free a few times but my hair could not be salvaged. I was not a knotty, frizzy, curly, dirty messy of a mop. I decided to just give up, my little ninja did not and proceeded to roll over everyone in the back of the truck while demonstrating his ninja-like moves with his feet and hands. As we crest the hill giving us a view of the village I let out a sigh of relief that we are almost home because this has now been one of the most exhausting travels of my time here. Shoulda kept my mouth shut though because he then jumped on me and yells “One more time for old time’s sake Miss Riley HIYEAAAAA!!!! Come on White Ninja!”

            I made it home in one piece and managed to escape only with two pretty nasty looking bruises on my wrists. The kid was strong and I am fairly strong but I have small wrists, bruise easily, and was in a confined space. When I arrived at school on Monday first hour of the day he is sitting in my class sleeping obviously and a girl asks who beat me. Everyone got a genuinely concerned look across their face and then a questionable one when I nodded to the ninja sound asleep in the back, then they all laughed when I told them the story.

            Now anytime he walks by me and tries to touch my hair or face I swat at him and he gets into his defensive mode because “White Ninja is coming out!”

Just another day in the life

Reflections on My First Official 6 Months at Site and 8 Months in Namibia

So for a while I have been compiling a list of things that I have not had, or done since moving to Namibia. Some of them were pretty obvious at the beginning but are now just part of my life. Others I really had to think about. I am sure I am missing many more differences but I think this is a good beginning.

Reflection on the past eight months living in Namibia

• I have not used a hair dryer
•  I have not used any hair product aside from shampoo
• No straightener or curling iron either
• All coffee here is instant coffee, and not nearly as good as something brewed.
• So that also means no specialty coffee
• While I am close to the capital and can realistically acquire most foods I desire, its never the same. Many pizzas here are made with just “tomato sauce” which is essentially ketchup. Not nearly as satisfying.
• No meat without bones. Namibians say that if it is not on the bone it is not meat. Some of them also don’t believe chicken or fish is meat.
• Cheese options: Gouda, maybe cheddar if you are lucky and in a big town. Also possibly cream cheese or mozzarella for a “high” price. This is sad L
• No fruit aside from apples and oranges, or the seasonal melon. No berries, grapes, etc
• I did just find out that seasonally there are other fruits available for example Mango and my favorite pomegranate (which comes straight off my coworkers tree. Apparently he cant eat them all himself, oh darn)
• No Netflix
• No Pandora
•  No personal vehicle. I am at the mercy of nice people who do not mind giving me a ride or picking me up on the side of the road.
• I use the same bar of soap to wash my body, my face, and my laundry. I could also use it on my dishes. Sometimes if my hair is really dirty I use it on my hair because it cuts through grease and oil wonderfully. Just think of how much money you spend on purchasing a separate product for each of those things. It’s a lot of money and packaging.
• No vacuum cleaner – this is surprisingly went unnoticed in my life for quiet a while until my friends realized that their carpeted flat (very rare) has been full of dog hair for the past two years. They had a dog at one point for a few months and it looks like it never left. Even without carpet though, the amount of dust and dirt that comes in is difficult to manage with an old broom and old fashioned mop.
• There really isn’t a “fast food” sector here. There is what Namibians call “take away” where you go into a market or shop and in the back is a small kitchen which will sometimes sell traditionally prepared meals or chips, chicken, Russians, or fish. In other words, soggy French fries doused in vinegar and spice, hot dogs, fried chicken (some places will literally sell half a roasted chicken for 30ND which is about 3USD), and fried hake. On a Friday night you wait in line for about 30 minutes or more, so it is certainly not fast. Occasionally restaurants in towns will also offer take-out but there is absolutely no such thing as delivery anywhere except the capital. Just the other weekend, my friends and I were in the capital and wanted pizza but it was too late to walk there by ourselves, we were disappointed we had not thought about it sooner until someone reminded us that they delivered. Needless to say, we were ecstatic.

Reflection on the past six months living in Schlip

• I have not had a shower – only baths, mostly in a bucket because I am too lazy to fill the whole tub
• Just beacause I cheated while I was living in Okahandja and used my host families washing machine, I have not had a washer or dryer in 6 months, just my bathtub and the African sun
• No TV. Some people here do have large flat screen TVs but no cable connection. So they all own like 15-20 mini USB sticks and watch movies
•  Only organic meat. Feed here is really expensive so most livestock eat what comes out of the ground outside my window. If I want meat I either purchase chicken that may or may not still be bleeding or I find someone willing to sell me parts of their sheep or goat. The same sheep or goats that I look at everyday grazing on the plants around Schlip. Ground meat may not be as organic but it is not as “pink” as it is in the US, more of a darker realistic color.
• Eggs are local and might come with little baby feathers on them. None are white shelled and they are all a rich color on the inside.
• No heating or cooling. No air conditioning unit anywhere. And no heating. This doesn’t sound like too much of a problem but when you prepared for “Africa” and didn’t bring many warm clothes, not having a heater kinda hurts sometimes
• Your choice is limited to what is available. If you go to the store in the village late, supply may be limited, also they may randomly not have what you need. So for example, if you really need milk for something, good luck. You may have a better chance of purchasing beer.
• No microwave. You don’t know how much of an integral part of your life a microwave is until you don’t have one. I’ve gotten by pretty well heating food up in the oven or on the stove but when your mom send you Easy Mac because she knows how much you love it and then you realize there is nothing easy about making it without a microwave.
• Transportation in Schlip consists of me only being able to go to town if I prearrange about a week in advance, check to make sure the driver is still going everyday and then coming back whenever they are. I have to work completely around their schedule, which may or may not be adhered to. I could “hike” out of town by standing in front of a small shop and seeing if people can squeeze me in somewhere, however coming back I would then find myself standing 50km from anything waiting for a car to turn down the road I need without any shade. No thank you, I will be at the mercy of other people’s schedules.
•  I have not sat on a couch since moving to Schlip, however this does not include the couch in my Peace Corps office. Many people own random pieces of furniture and most often, a bed is used as a couch.

Why Do You Do What You Do?

Dear Outside World,

           

            I am sorry for being absent most recently. There have been many reasons including shotty internet service, being swamped at trying to figure out teaching, battling being seen as just another person to pick up the slack, and probably the biggest, attempting to figure out exactly why I am where I am. Everyday brings new challenges and there are difficulties that are come with teaching especially with where I am. There is the everyday battle with controlling a class, the battle with seeing myself as a teaching adult and not as a student, the battle with coworkers that don’t take my suggestions or comments seriously because I was not trained in teaching and therefore have no idea what I am talking about, and most seriously – the battle with people who you feel just don’t care.

            I debated whether I wanted to write a post like this or not. I wondered if explaining my struggles would look bad on my community or country. But as I think about everything more and more, and talk to others about my current struggles I have begun to realize that the stuff that has gotten me down recently is not an isolated thing. It’s a universal one, and it’s the challenge of dealing with people who seem not to care.

            When I was a ripe old age of 18, just having graduated from high school and about to begin my university career in the international relations field I had a summer job working as a teachers’ aid. This particular summer all I was tasked with doing was making copies in the morning and then sitting around trying to entertain myself while simultaneously trying to ignore the other kid who’s entertainment was lets-see-what-we-can-do-today-to-irritate-Shannon. At one point he asked me what I was planning on studying. When I told him international relations, he asked why and I told him because I wanted to help create a better world for the future. I don’t remember quite how the conversation went but he challenged me asking why I do good things. I thought about it, and responded that it was probably because I wanted to help to make the world a better place and I believe good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. He then came back to me with the conclusive argument that I was selfish. Because I wanted good things to happen to me, I did good things to others. Needless to say, I was quite peeved at that. Someone I did not know was calling me selfish because I confided in him my deep personal thoughts. This idea absolutely stumped me and continued to do so until this weekend. So thank you Doug Johnson for planting this seed inside of me 5 years ago however, this weekend I came up with my answer.

            Recently I have been struggling at school with trying to implement change for the better however I am often met with “Great idea! That would be wonderful. Go ahead and do it.” Then I sit there like “Well we ALL have to participate for it to be successful.” Especially with me only being here for two years the last thing I want is to do all these things and in two years, no matter how much success there is, it stops. Throughout all of training we learned that sustainability is key, it you are not teaching someone to continue what you start, you will not have the effect you want.

I am constantly met with the excuse “Well you don’t need two people to do that job, you can do it yourself” “You can’t ask a senior teacher to do that, they are our superior so you can’t expect them to do something they don’t want to” “I have too many things on my plate” (this is quite legitimate as half the teachers here work also at the hostel, manage family farms, or have children to care for) or my personal favorite “How can you ask that of me when I have many other things going on in my life like church choir!” I find myself having to bite my tongue more often than not to suppress my urge to yell “Well its your JOB!” The disappointing part of this is that most of these excuses have come when I bring up that the student’s safety, security, or academic success is at risk. It is frustrating to wonder that if I wasn’t there would that kid have died? Or If I do not take this time to make myself available to give a student a make up assignment, will they fail my class and then the whole year (if a student does not pass English or Math then they are held back to retake the whole year again)?

It’s a sad fact of life that there will always be those people who cannot be bothered with something you care so deeply about. It is a struggle that is faced all over the world, in all industries, by all people. However, doesn’t it become something more when children are involved? This past weekend was the culmination of all my frustrations.

It was out weekend for the hostel meaning that all the kids were to go home on Friday afternoon and return on Sunday evening. It is the only time in the whole month when the kids get to go home and see their parents, get more money, and not have to answer to a teacher which is why I was shocked when 2 boys came to my door at nearly 7 at nigh asking for something for a teacher who lives/works at the hostel. They said they didn’t know where their ride was and that they were trying to convince someone to drive them a short 50min south or 30 minutes to the highway. No such luck in the previous 5 hours. I asked if they had dinner and they said no because they had no money and thought they would have been home by now. I told them to come back in a bit if they were still here and I would make them dinner.

At that time also, the shops were closing making it impossible to get anything even if you had money. I began to worry and texted another teacher asking if I should make the kids dinner. He said that would be very much appreciated and that there were a total of 14 of them. What? There are 14 abandoned teenagers with no food and no money and no one made sure they had dinner? I was met with a host of excuses as to why it was not a problem but what it came down to was that my students should be at home with their families but were not and instead were in a deserted hostel and hungry.

We ended up managing with some rice and canned veggies to make stir-fry for those who did not get a PB&J. They also devoured the last of my candy cane stash. The whole meal, feeding all 14 of them cost about $50. In USD that’s just $5. I didn’t need it when I asked someone for a reimbursement – I was more so curious to what they would say, giving them the benefit of the doubt that maybe they were just unable to help the kids but were grateful that someone did. This person actually stared at me like I had pulled a gun and shot them and told me that feeding the kids dinner was my choice so I wasn’t getting any money for it.

I really was not upset about the money, it wasn’t a lot and I got to hang out with some of my students outside the classroom, some of us watched Despicable Me, and some of them cleaned my house. I really couldn’t complain, but I was baffled that I was the only one to step up and for lack of a better phrase, come to their rescue. So then I wondered to myself, why did I do that? Why did I just help these kids? It would have been a good life lesson in budgeting for all of them. A bowl of popcorn, Frozen and a nice adult drink alone would have been good too. So am I expecting something good to come out of this? No. Am I turning into my mother doing whatever I can to help people even if it means giving up almost two weeks worth of food? Hopefully! But really, why? I even posted it on Facebook and am now writing a super long blog about it. Do I want gratification for my good deed? I mean I am already in the Peace Corps. Am I really actually selfish? Oh god!

Have no fear though, I had a revelation in the bathtub.

So Doug Johnson, this is for you. Is doing good actually a selfish act when you hope for good karma to come? Maybe for some people. And you know what, that is okay. At least you are doing good. James Madison also taught me that man is inherently selfish so naturally I would expect nothing less. BUT is it still selfish when you do a good deed for the betterment of the world? Or the future? Or even just one person’s life? I didn’t want anything from these kids, or their parents. Some kid asked if his mom could buy me chocolate, and I asked him why? I didn’t feed them dinner for chocolate, I can go get myself some chocolate whenever I want. What I realized, and hoped, would come out of this sad situation was that hopefully these 14 kids would see how easy it is to help someone and that they would then do it one day to another. Hopefully their parents would realize that there was someone out there that helped their child when they could not themselves and maybe one day they will do it for another kid. SO does this make me selfish? I don’t think it does one bit.

Yes this is the textbook idea of “pay it forward” and there is a strong sense of community here so how does this change anything? Maybe it could help people realize that the generosity that you have with those you love and that are part of your community can be extended to anyone. The tone that I got from those who did not choose to help the kids was fear of greed, abuse, and setting a precedence of certain expectations. This fear is not irrational, just the Monday after I was trying to ask a girl to stop talking in my class. She interrupts me to tell me that the government vehicle did not come until 1 in the morning and so the next Friday that there is an out weekend her sister and her are just going to come over and have me make dinner for them. Um no you’re not dear… But is fear of these kids and parents expecting me or anyone to do this again for them reason to not help? Yes – there is a lesson here to be learned about self-sufficiency, these kids are like 15, 16, and 17. They weren’t going to die. Is it good enough to let them go hungry though, or to turn your back on them? Its debatable, and depends on what is important to you. For me, what was important was showing my students that I cared about them.

So can I make these other adults care about and act on all the things that contribute to the success and well being of these teenagers? No probably not, they all have their reasons, and there will be many more situations with more reasons. I can however show these people, and the kids, and their parents that it is possible though, and quite easy. You know what, you might even get a cleaned flat out of it.

I Have No Idea What I Am Doing - The Woes of the First Week of School

Pretty Much Sums It Up

Being able to adapt in any circumstance is a very important quality in a Peace Corps Volunteer. Case and Point: The First Week of School. Now let me quickly detail how school begins back in the US (from what I remember). You choose your classes the previous school year and turn them, allowing the administration plenty of time during the extended holiday to create schedules, adjust for people who move, and any other moving variable. In high school I remember you then arrive a MONTH before school begins to officially register, pay your fees, make sure the schedules are okay. Teachers then are officially required to come to work a week or two before school begins to prepare classrooms, seating charts, lessons, technology, etc. On the first day of school for the students, everyone attends every class like they would every other day and thus the school year begins when it should and the number of teaching days are extremely close to the number of days actually in school. Well let me just say, that is not the case here.

Day 1 Monday: Only teachers arrive today. My instructions were to just hang out and get ready for the year. My response “Okay! Where is my classroom?” “Oh its not ready yet. We have to find the key, and clean it up and set up your projector. So you can just hang out in the library” “Oh okay, are you sure there is nothing I can do” “No Ms. Riley its okay” Well crap, what do I do with my time? I bugged my coworkers

Day 2 Tuesday: Students finally are here….but only for registration…They come, pay for the school year and possibly for last year if they didn’t pay their outstanding dues, register for the hostel and prove what grade they are to be placed in. Seems simple enough, not so much. This was the first day I noticed a bit of a Catch 22 occurring and the beginning of complete chaos. If at the end of the school year a student does not turn in all text books or has other outstanding fees that they owe to the school, the school withholds their report card until they get their money. Makes sense right? That’s what happens back in the US, at least at my schools. If you didn’t pay, your advancement in the registration process for the upcoming year was halted until you did. Especially in a situation like here where textbooks and school supplies are very valuable resources you should be held accountable if you loose or destroy something. On the flip side though, many of these people cannot afford, well anything, let alone school fees which come on top of very expensive uniforms and in many cases, hostel fees. Also, the Ministry of Education, and very rightly so, demands that a school cannot deny a child an education so therefore cannot withhold the report cards that will prevent them from attending school the following year. Both sides make sense and unfortunately the school is caught in the middle. There are parents who bring all the money they have to get their kid into school and there are parents who send their kids alone to school with no money. So what do you do? It’s a really hard situation to be in and I am sure it happens all over the country every year.

            Oh and my classroom still isn’t ready, they took a projector out of an unused classroom and had to figure out how to put it in mine. IT was also still dirty, having been closed up for the past two years. So I sat in the library again twiddling my thumbs.

            Another factor that added to the chaos was that this was one of the only opportunities that teachers were able to see and speak with parents. While there are a version of parent teacher conferences, the attendance rate may be somewhere around 5%. Mostly because parents don’t have the time or money to come into the village to speak with teachers. During home weekends at the hostel the kids hike in and out of the village on their own, or  few key parents rush in at 1pm and kids, run, grab their bags and are back on the road in 20 minutes. So registration is the only opportunity to see parents and discuss with them their student’s behavior or schoolwork. The parents are definitely interested because they actually ask to speak with certain teachers but when that happens, registration comes to a screeching halt as a 20-40 minute private conversation occurs. As a teacher I would jump at any chance I got to speak with a student’s parents but at the same time, registering 3 kids one day took two and a half hours. I counted.

Day 3 Wednesday: It is finally the students first day! But only half the students are here. This is for various reasons like transportation, some people can’t get rides into the village in the middle of the week, or take work off to get their kids to their new school. Also, as you will see in the following two days, things are still not in order and classes are not held so many people don’t make it a priority to arrive when they should on the official registration day. I wouldn’t rush either if I knew I would be sitting around school bored for the next week.

            So it is the students’ first day and they are divided into their registered classes. I am not a registered class teacher so I did not have students to take care of. The problem with this was if they showed up and still had not received their report cards they were defaulted into grade 8, mostly because they had no way of knowing if they passed or not. SO without knowing how many kids were in each grade there was no way to start making a schedule of classes.

            My classroom is ready for me now, but I have no idea how many students I have to organize desks or arrange them. I also have no idea the skill level of anyone because half the school is new kids from other schools so I can’t exactly pull out their exams from the previous years and analyze their strengths and weaknesses.

Day 4 Thursday: Still more kids are showing up, there is a better idea of how many classes there will be, the schedule can start to be created, but it isn’t a quick process. Lessons will begin on Monday. Today they begin handing out text books and notebooks for the kids. (Please keep note, not all kids are here yet though)

            I have students from last year coming to visit me in my completely empty classroom saying how bored they are. There is nothing I can do, most the school is sitting around waiting for the rest of the kids to show up, which is all they really can do right now.

Day 5 Friday: I don’t think anything happened on Friday still. I just try to make lessons and hang out in the library because it is much cooler than my new classroom. To pass the time I organize books.

Day 6 Monday: Now I get nervous because I have no idea what to expect, today is my first day in front of all my students alone. Ohmygod I am going to throw up. I get to school in a super cute outfit, I have read all the books the Peace Corps gave me, I am ready to make an impression. I get to school and Oh…the schedule isn’t done because the internet reception isn’t working and so the schedule cannot be downloaded off a program. Well that was anti-climactic Okay I will just be super prepared for tomorrow.

            Also, I ask for class lists, to make a seating chart, make the popsicle sticks in a can to encourage class participation. They weren’t done yet because they were still expecting more kids and technically registration wasn’t going to close until mid February. So I wasn’t going to get one anytime soon. Okay I’ll make my own when I have kids in class

Day 7 Tuesday: I finally have kids in my classroom! I introduce myself during the shortened class periods but of course only after I send half students each period on a witch hunt for more desks and chairs because the 36 that I had set up was not enough.  The bells are also irregular today so one class I had for nearly 90 minutes and I missed another one. We also go over classroom rules

Day 8 Wednesday: Today was my day to have kids fill out a survey so 1) I could have all their names, 2) so I could see who have trouble seeing, hearing, not talking, etc., and 3) so I could get a sample of their writing. I made a copy for every student. There was a scheduled staff meeting which couldn’t be after school so we were told that the classes would be cut short. Okay no problem I can do that, oh but on Wednesdays I don’t have a class for the first 4 periods and the classes are not cut short, we just don’t see our last three periods. Whelp there goes that day of regularity.

Day 9 Thursday. FINALLY A FULL CONSECUTIVE DAY but my classes are on different “lessons.” I was ready to do the survey I had printed off the previous day only to find out that almost 100 blank copies were now missing. Okay they can rip pages out of their exercise books and copy the questions from the board. Unfortunately I find out that half the kids in all my classes have arrived periodically throughout the week and thus do not have text books, exercise books, or even an available desk in my classroom. Off for the hunt again but only after I convinced them that it was okay to rip a page out of their notebooks. They were oddly very hesitant to do that.

Day 10 Friday: I was finally going to have all my classes on the same page, and present an excellent lesson on how to write a paragraph. I was so excited, this was going to be awesome, I would then have my footing to prepare lessons over the weekend it was going to be great. I do my first class, it went over great, it was perfectly timed, its about to be break time, its Friday life is good. Oop, students are called at break time for an announcement. Guess what at 10am everyone is to go home, change into athletic clothes and we are all going to go clear the field so track athletics can start on Monday. I.WAS.SO.MAD. Now every single one of my classes was on a different lesson and I was dumbfounded. I stormed up to my principal and asked how was I supposed to do my job when the kids aren’t even in the classroom half the time. I was told I just had to be flexible because this is always how the year begins.

            An hour later we go out to our sandy, rocky, thorny, soccer field armed with about 8 rakes and 8 shovels and two wheelbarrows and were told that the kids must get the rocks and thorny grasses off the measured tracks. Of course this essentially meant that the girls stood there while the boys worked. I was not having that so I ran around the whole place channeling Amy Irvine and Kati Campbell telling the girls that they were not incapable of helping the boys and that they had the single greatest tool to use which was their fingers. If the boys were raking they could at least bend over pick up the bigger rocks with their fingers and get them out of the way.  It got to the point that when I walked up girls either ran away or immediately bent over picking up the rocks. I did catch a group of 6 girls “going to the bathroom” and pulled the line that if they had been sweating enough they wouldn’t need to go to the bathroom.

I did have one girl though that took advantage of the opportunity of throwing rocks and chucked one strategically at a guy who apparently was teasing her. He keeled over I pulled her aside and made her pick up rocks be herself while I stood over her for 15 minutes. It sounds harsh but I couldn’t give her a time out, then I would have every girl throwing rocks at boys, wanting to sit down in time out. Questionable punishment: maybe. Successful: She did not hit another guy and neither did any other girl that I saw.

So although amidst all the chaos, I began to appreciate my ability and that of my coworkers to just adapt to anything that is thrown at you. Sure, plenty of it could be avoidable, but then I would't have nearly as cool a blog post for you all.