Gosh, is it Sunday night already? Where did our weekend go? In fact, where did the last week go? It seems like time is just flying by at the moment. Anyway, here are some highlights from the last week....
On Monday, the principal sent a handyman over to our house to turn on the heating system after a pretty chilly weekend. Daniel and I had tried to do it ourselves but hadn't had much success. It turns out that we just needed to turn the thermostat above zero. Oops! I'm sure that the principal thinks that we are complete morons as this is just the latest in a series of embarrassing incidents. Only a few weeks ago the same handyman came over to our house as we had been having some issues locking our front door. He took one look at the situation, moved our front doormat and locked the door on the first try. Yes, the mat had gotten itself wedged between the frame and the door and neither Daniel or I had noticed it during our many, many, many attempts at getting the door to lock. Pretty embarrassing. Worse still is that we left our car headlights on overnight this weekend, so tomorrow morning we are going to have to ask the principal to help us solve yet another silly problem.
Halloween is rapidly approaching, so last week I used most of my freetime and art lessons with the Grade 1s to introduce some Halloween words. I'm absolutely amazed at how spongelike these little kids are. They picked up the new words really fast and were soon drawing some absolutely amazing Halloween themed pictures. I like to think it's my skill as an art teacher, but really I think that this year's Grade 1s are just incredibly talented.
On Thursday morning I drove to Mátészalka (a town about 30 kms away) where I teach an extra English class each week to some Grade 1 students. The first couple of times I taught the class, the school arranged for one other teacher to sit in on the lesson in case something happened. They'd never employed a native speaker to teach English before, so I think they were a little nervous about how it was going to work, especially with such young students. But everything went really well and the kids very quickly adapted to my teaching methods. In fact things are working out so well with the class that more and more teachers - and now the parents - want to sit in on the lessons and see how the class operates. Last week there were eight adults sitting up the back watching the class. The week before the principal and three teachers attended the lesson. The week before that the vice principal, two upper class English teachers and a photographer were present. It's actually getting a little weird and I'm starting to get really nervous before the class because I don't want to stuff up in front of so many important people. Hopefully my novelty value will wear off soon and I can go back to just enjoying being silly with a bunch of great kids.
Speaking of silliness, on Friday I was back teaching in Máriapócs and had just taken one of the Grade 1 classes to lunch. After lunch I took the kids outside to play and some of the kids to decided to hang around me and practice their English. Mostly this involved them repeating the few English sentences they know over and over again. For example, they just love telling me their names and asking what my name is. They then extended this to pointing at objects that they know, like an apple, and saying "My name is apple". Sure, it's not perfect English but the meaning of their sentences is pretty clear. Anyway, on Friday one of the students decided to insert an adjective into the sentence as well. She pointed at my jumper which was decorated with a rhinestone butterfly and said "My name is Amanda beautiful pullover". I just think that's an amazing linguistic accomplishment for a 6 year old who has been learning English for only a few weeks. They are so brave. I love it.
Of course, after that things got a little weird as all the kids started touching the butterfly on my jumper. As you can see from the photo, the butterfly is right on my chest, so it was a pretty awkward experience having all these tiny hands groping me. Luckily I'm a lot taller than the kids, so standing up soon put an end to the impromptu patdown :)
As for this weekend, it was pretty uneventful. Our Saturday morning class in Nyírbátor is winding down, so Daniel and I were able to devote most of our time to working on uni assignments. I also found some time to put the finishing touches on my toilet paper roll mummy. I love this little guy and am hoping to get some of the kids to make their own this week.
- Amanda
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