PC Wanderlust

1st day of teaching

It’s been a while since I’ve posted – sorry about that! I did get to the internet café last week on Friday and was able to read my email, but was not able to answer any emails or to even sign in to my blog site. Frustrating! I found out the reason the connection is so slow and bad is that it is a dial-up connection split between 4-6 computers. No wonder!
Anyway, I’ve had a busy week, as usual. On Thursday I co-taught my first class! Gina and I taught a class of about 60-70 girls at an all girls’ college. When I say college, remember it is not actually a university. It’s basically a high school, so the students are still pretty young. For our first lesson, we just did an informal lesson going over introductions and questions to ease into things. The girls were so shy at first. It was very sweet. By the end they were beginning to open up more and had lots of questions for us. At the end of the class a bunch of the girls came up to get our autographs! As I was walking home afterwards, a few of them had waited and gave me some flowers they had just picked. I really like the all girl setting – At the next PC interview, I am definitely going to request being placed in a girls’ college. This one that we are doing our teaching at is actually really nice. It is big, airy, bright, has fans, and the huge classroom we taught in actually had a microphone to use. That’s not the case for everyone. Two of the guys in our training group taught at another college here in town. They had a group of about 200 students, and no microphone. They had to have one person standing at the front of the class and one in the middle, and they basically relayed information back and forth. How can you get anything done like that? Today Gina and I will co-teach one more lesson, then for the next two weeks we will be alternating days. She’ll teach one day while I observe, then we’ll switch. I’m looking forward to it. It is so strange actually being in front of a classroom with so many people. They are all used to being taught in a very different way than what I am used to. It’s going to take some trial and errors to see what will work. That’s what model school is for though!
Yesterday was I think the best day that I’ve had in Bangladesh so far. John’s birthday is on Sunday, so he arranged a boat ride for everyone to celebrate. Best $1.50 I ever spent! We left on the boat around 12:30 and didn’t get home until 8:30pm. I think there were about 30-40 of us on the boat. It was a long black boat with a thatched roof. Most of us sat on the roof, carefully balanced so that our weight was distributed evenly so we wouldn’t tip! A couple of times we had to rearrange because the front end got too heavy and we were brushing the plants in the bottom of the river. The first few hours we floated along, had some nice snacks, and just chatted. At the halfway point, we got off at some little rural school and played soccer, stretched, etc. When we got back on, we had birthday cake! By that time the sun was starting to go down. I have never seen a more spectacular sunset in my life! The whole sky was filled with beautifully colored clouds. There were some patches in the sky that were absolutely iridescent. I’ve never seen those colors in the sky before! It seriously looked like mother of pearl. I was so focused on watching the sun set that for the longest time I didn’t even turn around. When I finally did though, there was the moon, full and huge in the sky. I hardly knew where to look. Everyone on the boat was just delirious; it was so nice. I think I took about 50 photos!
So, that is all for now. I just wanted to add too that you are more than welcome to email me! And you don’t have to worry about keeping your emails short. The longer the better! I actually save them on my flash drive and take them home to read, so it doesn’t take much time at the café. Thanks everyone!

posted by Kathryn @ 9/16/2005 11:44:00 PM