Another tough day.

I have realised that my previous input does not make sense so when I can get rid of my horrid headache and relax I will try and sort it out.

I have actually had a really lovely time, or did till I got to work, but..

So first the lovely time. One of the Americans who visited 5 weeks ago has come back, so that is very nice, to see someone I feel I know, but her parents are visiting too, which is even nicer. It is her mum's first trip out of America, and her Dad's health is not brilliant so it has been a great achievement for them both to be here.  I have never met a family from Georgia, just nice regular people of my age, who can talk about music, art,furniture, and music again.  While I was listening to American music in Britain they were listening to British music in America and we have several cross over albums that we both enjoyed. Over my life I have had several passions for different countries. For political reasons at one I did not want to go to the states, but as a fan of the Monkees, then Carole King and Joni Mitchell, I did want to go, and as someone with an interest in Native Indians as a child and who loved Gone with the Wind as a teenager I also wanted to go, but apart from a visit to New York and a flight out of Seattle it has never happened. But meeting these people has made me yearn once more for the chance one day.


So that is the lovely, but the negative is yet again my inability to control the kids but also why I was on my own with the kids.  On Friday the students will be presenting to the parents but it has completely  thrown all the teaching schedules out and as per usual no one informs me that my class has disappeared until I turn up to teach it. On Tuesday I just gave up and went and join the kids having dance lessons because actually my dance skills as good as the person trying to teach them so I might as well chip in with something because at this rate the presentations I have had to cobble together as no one told me about the event have had to go unrehearsed.  It is also taking the teachers away from their usual activities so today when I entered my year one class the teacher was absent I figured doing something for Friday. Trying to gather a group of kids together who were just left to play in the room is quite hard even in English and I got most of them into a circle and doing the work but of course one or two just had to bugger it up for everyone so in the end Miss whisked one of them off to the head.  Asiz who is one of the men helping to build the school round us witnessed me taking the boy off in high dudgeon if that is the right spelling thought it was very funny.  Anyway that alerted the teacher that maybe I needed some help so she left her prep to help me and of course it was a nice lesson.  But some of the kids work so hard to learn English,  one little boy just sat there practising his heart out and it seems unfair that he is having to struggle against all this noise and disruption.   One other nice thing though when I went to year zero thank goodness their teacher was there, the kids were all getting together in a circle and one of the girls, very bright said, "sit down Ellie."  I have made them a little postbox to post letters: A B C D E into and this time when they did it I had more control and all of them especially the lad who pushed it so hard last time that it broke took great care to put the letters in and not damage the little box.  So when my colleagues are there it is great, I just wish a) that they did not have to disappear or that  b) that they could disappear and all the kids would be as angelic and c) that I had as much access to them when I need it as the others do.  Anyway tomorrow I am covering an absent teacher, so I think I had better end my griping and take my head ache  to bed and try and recover.