Week 7: Function in Disaster, Finish in Style
Saturday
I think I've learned something about my moods here - when I feel depressed one day, it means I'm going to fall sick the next morning. After venting into the blog yesterday, I woke up this morning with a headache and a sore throat, and something similar happened when I got sick several weeks ago. Well, hopefully this too shall pass. I spent the day in the house, drinking juice and blobbing.
Sunday
My throat's still sore, but not as much, and my headache's gone. I don't think my sore throat has ever really gone away since I've been here - having to shout to be heard in class makes it worse, but usually I can manage. After taking two sick days already, and classes being cancelled almost one day every week, I don't feel that I can miss any more days of work.
Aside from that, not a whole lot happened today.
Monday
I woke up feeling a little sick this morning, but not enough to stop me from going to the school. Once I got there, however, things went downhill - I began feeling queasy and crampy, and I ended up spending the rest of the morning running to one of the bathrooms. By the time recess started, I felt so awful that I wasn't able to leave until lunchtime, almost two hours later.
Don't believe for one moment that I was doing this to get out of work, because I would never go into the school bathrooms here unless I had no choice. They're dark and filthy, and because the flush doesn't work, they have that lovely smell that anyone who's used a latrine at summer camp will recognize. Even so, I couldn't help giving the impression I was just hiding, because once I got home, I was feeling much better (I still ate very little at lunch, though).
Eventually I emerged from my room, and went to Puerto Lopez to use the photocopier. To keep from having to remind the kids constantly about things like Silent E and the different vowel sounds, I've typed up a series of 'cheat sheets' that cover the English alphabet, special letter sounds (SH, TH, etc.), Silent E, and a list of basic questions: who, what, when, where, why, how, how much, how many. I returned home in the evening with an enormous stack of paper, and spent the rest of today organizing the pages into packets - I want to give one to each kid in the four highest grades, which comes to almost two hundred packets, each seven pages long. Yikes.
Tuesday
I felt mostly okay on Tuesday morning, until I finished breakfast. As soon as the last bite was down, I found myself dashing back to the bathroom and returning everything to the porcelain god. Queasy and miserable, I was nonethless still able to talk, so I didn't feel right not going to work.
My first class was with the littlest kids. I had made copies of some pages from the new books, showing pictures of different animals with the English words, so I handed these out to the kids to trace and color while I sat in the teacher's chair hunched over and groaning quietly. Fortunately, the kids loved them.
After that, I had class with the fifth grade. These kids are probably my favorites - they're mostly well behaved and easy to get along with, and they're very enthusiastic. I handed the new packets out to them, and we spent class going over the info. Reviewing the vowels was interesting, because I used a lot of gastric descriptions for how to make them (short A sounds like choking, for example, while short U is like a burp), and the kids enjoyed practicing that. I still didn't feel great, but my mood was a little better, so I went off to the next class, third grade A, and repeated the lesson. These kids are a bit younger and I hadn't planned to give their grade the packets, but this particular class has been zipping along with the material well enough that I thought they could handle it, and I was right. They were very happy to hear that they could keep the packets, too.
Normally I go and sit out in the courtyard at recess so the kids can come and talk to me. I didn't feel up to it today, though, so I went to the room where I'd be having my next class - the fourth grade - and waited there until recess was over.
If I haven't mentioned it before, fourth grade is the class I had my first day on the job with, back when they were leaving me with one class all morning. I don't know if it's because of that impression or because it's just the way they are, but I don't get along with them as well as I do with most of the other grades. I handed out the packets again and went over them, but over and over, kids kept talking and distracting the others and not paying attention - since hearing me speak the sounds is a big part of the lesson, this is a serious problem.
By the third or fourth time I'd asked the same kids to be quiet and pay attention because this was important material to learn, I was starting to lose it. I have two class periods in a row with this class on Tuesdays, for a total of an hour and a half - I think I would have been okay on a normal day, but feeling sick like I was, I couldn't take it. I asked the kids why they wouldn't listen - did they not want to learn? Did they not want to work with me? Did they hate me? The class answered that last question with a cheerful and resounding "Yes!". "Okay. I'll go," I whispered, and left the room.
(For the record, I'm pretty sure they don't hate me - the kids here have never answered anything but yes to a question, even when it's clearly not the answer).
Of course I wasn't going to actually leave the school. I explained to one of the senior teachers what had happened, that I couldn't work with the fourth grade right now, and then sat down on a bench outside the room to cool down. While I was there, I could hear another teacher inside the room chewing the kids a new one, though I couldn't hear exactly what they were saying. Some of the littler kids wandered by, and we chatted a bit, which cheered me up some. By now there were only about fifteen minutes of class left, so I went back into the room and quietly resumed the lesson where I'd planned to - drawing fruit. This is always popular, so things were pretty okay until I was able to go home.
I didn't feel great for the rest of the day. I told Flor over lunch how I'd been sick for the last few days - she thinks it's due to my staying inside so much (I tried explaining that it was because I was in a new place, but nothing doing). To make her feel better, I went out to Lopez again to make more copies. At the bus stop, I met one of the other teachers - she asked if I was feeling better, and I said yes.
Wednesday
I still felt a little sick today, but not as bad as the last two days. I've decided that it's best to just go on as usual - be my usual cheerful and open self, be nice to everyone, let the past be past, forgive, etc. It seems to be working pretty well.
Class with the littlest grade was fun today. The topic is still animals, so I started by reviewing with the little plastic animals - I'm definitely going to leave them here for the next volunteer (though said volunteer might want to leave the toy goose out, because even most of the adults here don't know what a goose is). After that, I showed the kids a photo of my dogs, and then asked them to draw pictures of their own pets, or of their favorite animal if they didn't have a pet. Once they'd done that, I wrote the English words for the animals with the drawings, and gave a stamp of approval. I need to make more copies of those trace-and-color animal pictures, too.
After recess, I had class with the seventh grade. They're usually pretty rowdy, but fortunately they're also good-natured and tend to listen when I ask them to calm down. One of the boys in the class is deaf (or mostly deaf, I'm not sure which), and he seems to have picked me out for a special friend - I'm flattered.
I'm supposed to be able to leave when I'm done with this class, but that's rarely an option. If I start to leave, I can hear the kids going wild and tearing up the room as soon as I'm outside, so to save the other teachers the trouble, I usually end up staying in the room to supervise until the next teacher comes - or, in the case of today, until it's time to go home.
It was just as I was about to leave that I realized I couldn't find the photo of my dogs I'd shown earlier. Since it's a very good photo, capturing both of them at once, I really wanted to find it, and went back to ransack the empty classrooms. The teacher of the littlest grade had already left, but I asked one of the teachers who was still there if she'd keep an eye out for the photo, and that I'd ask the homeroom teacher tomorrow. That was how I learned there won't be classes tomorrow because of some holiday in Lopez (people, when you cancel a class day almost every week, it's no wonder the kids lag).
At home, Flor confirmed that there won't be classes tomorrow, and I found the dog photo in the pocket of my skirt. Isn't that always the way?
For classes at the community center, I gave everyone there one of the alphabet cheat sheet packets too. One of the people who'd come that day was a professor, while all the others were just starting - he left early on, making me feel awkward.
Thursday
This morning, I got some much-needed sleeping in.
In the afternoon, I prepared to go to Lopez, only to realize halfway to the bus stop that I was supposed to be teaching a class at the community center in twenty minutes. I went there quickly, and even though only two people showed up, it was fun. I gave them packets too, and let them direct what I taught. I ended up drawing a labeled diagram of a house, and then using the little plastic animals (who knew they'd be a hit with adults too?) to start a discussion on types of animals. Like the kids, they didn't know what a goose was - I tried describing it, and they thought I meant a swan, but it did give me a chance to entertain them by telling about the Waterfowl Festival my hometown holds every fall.
The biggest snag came when I tried to explain frigatebirds. The people around here call frigatebirds 'gaviotas', but gaviota is officially the word for seagull, which made it difficult to explain seagulls. I hoped I might be able to refererence Buscando Nemo, but neither of these ladies had seen that movie, so I gave up and moved on to horses, donkeys, and mules.
Friday
Gaston called me into his office to talk about my blowout on Tuesday (which he thought had happened on Wednesday - huh?) I apologized, explaining that I was sick that day and that it wouldn't happen again, he was sympathetic, we shook hands, and I think all will be well.
After that, it was classes as usual. The only small snag came when they ended the day so early that I didn't have any time to hold lessons with the last class on my schedule - people, this is getting ridiculous. Nonetheless, I stood out in the courtyard with the lines and said goodbye to each class as they marched out.
Marianne should be coming back soon. I hope so, anyway, because I need to meet with her to discuss my departure plans.
Saturday
Sure enough, Marianne called me this morning. We arranged to meet in Lopez later, and I spent the morning doing my laundry until it was time to head out.
It turns out Marianne and her boyfriend didn't actually elope, but big things did happen - he realized how much he loved her, and they're making plans for her to come to the US for the summer (she tells me she hasn't been back to the States in two years). We went up to her house on the hillside, where he's paying for her to live in a new, bigger residence with a jacuzzi and a gorgeous view of the ocean. We chatted about my experiences here, and whether I had any suggestions for the future (I did), and I gave her all the teaching books I'd received. I also gave her One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish (it's a very useful book and it's been a big hit - family, I'll buy us another copy, I swear!) and the little plastic animals. She particularly liked these, and had an idea to use them as models for making carvings out of vegetable ivory.
Back down in town, I bought a bus ticket to Quito for Saturday - since it's tourist season, I wanted to be sure and get a seat now. My bus leaves in the morning that day, so I should get back to Quito that night. Since my plane doesn't leave until Sunday, Roc said he'd arrange for me to stay at Isabel's again for one night. Hopefully he'll remember, and if not, I asked Marianne to remind him.
Things were quiet back at Casa de Flor until 8 in the evening, when we all went down to El Pelicano. They were having a party for a friend of the family, so there was music, drinks, food, and general fun to be had, and I think most of the town ended up passing through at some point. I kept four little girls entertained by letting them read my pocket Spanish-English dictionary (whatever popped into their head, they wanted to know the English word for it). We all drank a toast with some kind of very strong, very foul-tasting alcohol, but fortunately I managed to get away with only a tiny sip.
After that, everyone danced for at least two hours. When people have asked if I like dancing, I always say "No, because I'm not good at it". Tonight, however, they wouldn't take no for an answer. I was pulled onto the dance floor with three different men, and trotted about with my wrists grasped tight, unable to escape. There are some photos of me on my camera - I look unhappy and bewildered in most of them, which is pretty accurate. It's not quite true that I don't like dancing, but I like being able to choose when I dance, what I dance to, and who I dance with, and the fact that people were laughing and teasing me about my "boyfriends" made me very uncomfortable. Eventually I said I was tired, and they let me sit down, and after that I pretended to be sleepy (which wasn't hard) and they left me alone. It was almost midnight by now, extremely late for me, so Vanessa took me home even before they cut the cake - I was a little sad about that.
Once home, I crashed hard.
