Back to school!!

It was back to school again. It seems odd to have the first day off and still have the first day be a Monday. I guess I am not a flexible as I need to be, but it is coming slowly :P

After the power outages of last night, or more like the war between light and darkness was battled, I found myself staring at my alarm clock: 3:30am. There was no way I was going to get up at that time, so I stared at the numbers watching time slip by as slowly as thoughts seem to be making their way through this molasses soaked brain of mine these days. It had the desired effect: I received two and a half more hours of sleep.

Upon awaking again at 6am, I took my daily shower. I then attempted to go through my routine of checking my email, except there was once again no internet. So, I figured that I would skip that portion and go straight to my cup of rather bad instant coffee (I bought my own, so no more sweet 3-in-1 stuff for me). Unfortunately, there was no water in the water cooler/heater and the gas for the stove had been taken away and the replacement had yet to be installed...the coffee was not happening!!

I got to school, and spent the first full class going over the test. It seems that they know the information, they are just having a problem putting it into context. They are just not good at taking tests! After learning this, and taking the hour to do it, I found out that we are going to take all of those who scored below 60% and reteach them on Saturday. This idea of reteaching them and giving them another test to give them the possibility of raising their grade is a good one.. I have to be there anyway, I may as well be doing something to benefit the students...I just wish they would tell me these things before I spend my class time doing the same exact thing!!

My second class period, I went over collocations. Not as bad of a task as I thought, but not overly easy either. I think they get the idea, but I would not want to test them on it at the moment. The third class period (the same group as my first) we went over the next lesson, and I handed them out the passage that I will do as dictation. Tomorrow I also have to figure out what to do with them for creative writing. I think I will do something with the dictation passage (it is a simplified version of the Boy Who Cried Wolf).

During the break from 11:30am - 1:00pm, I was supposed to teach a mothers' class. At least I thought I was supposed to. Nobody showed up today. As it turns out, Easter Monday is a holiday around here, a fact that no one felt they should inform me about. So, I was waiting for my students to show up, and they never did...they were not even expected too!! When am I going to learn that I will not be told anything, especially if I need to know it. Somehow this part never gets any easier.

After school I usually attempt to get away from the people I work with for a while, but today I guess I did just the opposite. First I went with the other teacher to buy sunglasses at the duty free shop. It was closed. We did, however, stop off at the sweet shop and get saffron cotton candy from Iran. It was quite good, though I still am unable to describe the taste. Then, as my internet was still out, I went over to the dean's house where we talked about school and had dinner and talked about school some more. It was 10pm before I left there! I could have stayed longer, and he would have let me, but I felt his wife was wanting to get to bed, so I decided to leave (I didn't realize how late it was until after I was leaving).

Luckily the internet was finally back up, so I was able to check my emails as such. Hopefully tomorrow will be a good day as well.