Today was rough. Beginning with a 7:00 speed shower (cause it's soo cold) and we have NO HOT/even warm/ water. Its takes a little self pep talk before I even step into the shower in the mornings just to get me through the next 10 minutes or so. Even though it's EXTREMELY hot here the mornings don't bring about much love for the cold water. I quickly got ready for another morning in the office. I started in there on monday and as overwhelming as it was with everything to keep track of and remember I definitely did not find it as draining or emotionally&physically exhausting as teaching grade 3 all morning like I had been for the past three or so weeks. It's a constant battle with them and I would rather be annoyed by the alarm in the office every 30 minutes telling me to go ring the bell rather than constantly be telling Raijan or Joash to be sitting down and closing their mouths EVERY 30 seconds! Its a different kind of stress in the office. And i'm not exactly where my place is yet or what is expected of me but I hope I learn. Time, time, time. Seems to be all I base anything on here. Give it time. Well honestly I hope time passes quickly. I have a countdown to my departure. 35 weeks give or take. Anyways so after my shower I realized that Pamela was not up for the morning in the third grade classroom. She had taught the full day on monday but had probably overdone it and had a rough and painful night so she asked if I could take the third graders in the morning. When I went to tell Andrea this I found out from Lorraine that Andrea was sick too and was probably going to take the morning off from the office. "Oh great!" I thought "Here we go again, except now two are down and out". So I took the third graders and tried to get them to focus all morning on their exam review since their first quarter exams start tomorrow. We'll see how good of a job I did in following Pam's lesson plan when she tests them tomorrow in class......
Today was proably one of my hardest days in PE and conicidentally the hottest. There is no covered gym or even a resemblence of a gym here in Yap. Its just an open court on a raised hill (which is REALLY annoying for retrieving volleyballs and basket balls all the time!!) So just fighting the heat was hard enough. I had the sophmores and freshman today. They are a tough bunch. The freshman are still learning that they are in High school now and the sophmores are just........well they are just them. I wanted to start three man volleyball with them so I made teams on the weekend and set up a tournoment style play hoping to give them something to enjoy and some healthy competition. Well they all had their own opinions and a lot to say about how much they didn't like this three man volleyball stuff. They said it in a different way of course. After a while I just gave up and blew my whistle and kept score and stopped trying to yell over them or teach them anything new. Sometimes they can blatantly and not really care. Its hard enough for me to maintain any form of control outside but there are somedays that they really just let me know that they want to go back to their old style of PE where their homeroom teachers would let them just go play whatever they wanted. Now they have to learn about the sport, take quizzes and do occasional projects and they are so unmotivated its extremely difficult to go against the only way they've ever known. At first it was new and exciting but now they are very hard to get moving and I'm starting to give up. I had this big plan for them, to teach them everything they want to know about sports. To make PE fun. But I think i've failed. They don't enjoy what I plan and some of them refuse to participate. Its so hot sometimes I don't blame them for just sitting down in the middle of the court and wanting to lie down. There is sweat constantly dripping down my legs, back and arms (weird). I had never sweat from my arms before I came here. And of course I burn, very midly, almost every day. .....
I got a package from southern today! Tears streaming down my cheeks as I read all the notes from those back in Tennesse at my beloved school. Tears for two reasons. one is that I miss southern so much. I miss studying (I know crazy idea right to miss studying!) but once you've been a teacher for two months you start to see how much easier it is to be a student. and number 2 reason is that I know a lot of them will not be there when I get back. Graduating, moving on up to bigger and better things. But I still have my time to do at Southern. (ps I got the joker too. Time to sit down and scan it:) The other girls were dissing southern a bit and boy did I want to tell them off. Southern is my pride and joy but I guess that's how it is for everyone and their own schools.
I guess that's where my day ends. Changed my room around so hope I can sleep.
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