First day

So today was my first day at an English school. I've got to remember to say stuff like "Zed" instead of "z", "take away" instead of subtraction, "toliet" instead of bathroom. And Ben's favorite, rubber which does NOT mean a condom, but an eraser. I had a bunch of little children coming up to me asking for rubbers which was slightly funny.

To start off our first day in English schools, Nicole, Danielle and I, walked to our bus stop, got on the right bus, got off at the right stop....and SURPRISE! WANDERED! For at least twenty minutes. We were supposed to be at our school by 8:30 and instead we arrived around 9:20. Folks, we were told to leave at 8 so we could get there on time, we left at 7:40. How we get so lost, I will never know. We wandered a bit before calling TimePlan and asking to speak to Allen who kind of helped us. We eventually found the stop ourselves. NDI then got a tour of the school, a brief introduction to the years and such and then were put in a Year 3(Danielle), 4 (me) and 5 (Nicole) classroom.

My teacher seemed to NEVER smile. I think the whole day I saw her smile ONCE! It was horrible. For a teacher who uses humor in the classroom, these kids were so disciplined. She raised her voice several times and kept saying, "This is MY classroom. Why would you behave like this in MY classroom?" I hope that this is not the norm, but I am suspecting it may be. The children who were Year 4's, weren't that old and should have had the luxury of still being able to be a bit childish. They couldn't even talk as they were getting ready to leave or out in the hallway on the way out.

I sat in the classroom after wondering if I would be able to do this, it's really scary! I've got to get a folder together of stuff that I can pull out on the fly for the kids. I've already got some games saved from my college classes so hopefully some of that will work!

Wish me luck!