Yesterday it was unusually cloudy and foggy at the end of day and last night we had more snow and we are still in the cloud now, so a good excuse just to have a nice quiet day reading. The German guests have gone (another ngo), only the owner seems to be here so for the moment it feels blissfully quiet. When it is like this I feel I can potter to the kitchen sit there a while and feel at home.
One of the first books I read whilst here was called the Last Runaway or something like that about an English woman moving to America and finding herself involved in the underground railway to help slaves escape. Whilst back in the UK, I watched 12 years a slave, then listened to some of the adaptation on the radio. I am now reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It is a Russian version that I found in the school, but is English (I wish, could you imagine if I could read it in Russian) some of the words are so time and place specific that I do not know what they mean. But it is a very good book. I had a film of it when Nathan was little reading it though I can see it is a very powerful exploration of America during the time of slavery. So a slight theme in my reading. I think that the description of leaving England and heading for very rural America in the first book and surviving winter there has parallels to life here.
At school for once the class 1 Kruski were not too bad, I realise part of the problem is the acoustics in the room, I helped by being quiet and resolute rather than getting cross when they were really annoying,but actually they worked well yesterday. The two girls helped again with year zero which was nice. I do not usually teach year zero on Fridays, but wanted them to have the lesson they missed on Monday - an hour a week is not much for them, but to my delight one of the boys who has not up to now wanted to speak in English suddenly piped up and asked the girls their names in perfect English. Quite a lot of them seem to know their colours too and their clothes words so they are suddenly really progressing and they really listened to when I told them the Elmer story. When I first camein they were doing a national dance, really well and it shows me how much ability they have when I see them working like that and that I am right to try and progress them a bit quicker. Meanwhile with year 1 on Fridays I have them for little individual sessions so I brought a couple in, they all had to play a little game to identify the right number, 15, 16, 16, 18, or 19. Then they had to see if they could spot patterns e.g. hop, mop, top and most of them did in the end, but the best bit was putting the nose on the clown. When I went to Bishkek recently I left their class teacher an activity to do, on a big circle,one side do a sad face, the other side a happy face (trying to get these two words to stick - they can do the gestures, but forget the words) . So when I got back I had all these beautiful pictures. Yesterday I got them to write the words happy and sad on the right picture, then they got to choose a fluffy nose and stick it on the happy face, the pictures look great. Then after school I took the cuzul gyp, (red thread) that I bought and was about to start threading the faces onto when the 16/17 year kruski class who had told me the word cuzul gyp spotted me and again in the correct English asked what I was doing. LUckily they could see otherwise how would I say, I am threading happy and sad clown faces onto the cotton and have them understand, and bless them a number of them helped me, which was just as well as I kept getting the thread in a knot. The faces are now hung up in the corridor so I hope the kids will be pleased when they come in on Monday. We will have the big Norooz event at the end of next week the end of term three so I want lots of their work up.
So things feel not too bad, but when I rang to find out why I had the wrong plane ticket I was told by the travel agents that my employers had sanctioned it and it is non refundable. GRRRR if that is the case. My employers seem to do this just make decisions without consultation. Given that the new plane goes to Gatwick instead of STansted and is more expensive, I really want to know why! I also feel a bit frustrated that at present we cannot make more of the opportunity we have here with Bilimkana I feel it has so much more potential to do things like running special events at the school e.g. youth clubs etc. I am hoping that all this will come up for discussion next week when I finally get to sit down with my colleagues and discuss how this year has gone. Having looked up what other TEFL work is out there it is a very mixed picture. A lot of places e.g.Indonesia will not employ me, as I am too old, and a lot of places expect staff to teach for 30 hours a week and prepare I am not sure I could have done that when I was younger, but the amount of energy this type of teaching requires, no way so while things are not perfect here there is still a lot to be said for it.
Meanwhile Nathan is still off in India and it will be interesting to see if that has affected his plans and if so what that might also mean re next year.
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