Yet another “work week”. We started this week with the last of the reading tests. Finally all done with those, it took long enough… Now we can make tutor couples for the tutor reading we have planned.
We were supposed to have our weekly meeting with the principal, but he was in meetings with the teachers today, so it got postponed to tomorrow. And since the fourth grade teacher was absent, they dropped us there to keep them busy (in an educational way, of course). After today, we were completely exhausted. Now I know why the teacher doesn’t wait for silence to start her lessons, but just continues: they absolutely don’t listen and just can’t be quiet for longer than a few seconds!
Tineke and I are the shoppers this week, so after lunch we got on our bikes and left to get grilled cheese sandwich ingredients and some potatoes, veggies and meat for tonight.
On our way back home, we saw two extremely cute monkeys in a cage at the car wash. I felt so sorry for them, cause the cage was barely big enough for them to move in…
Didn’t do much else today.
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On Tuesday and Wednesday Marij and I observed and helped in the first and second grade, cause we’ll be teaching those kids next week. And yet again we got to teaching as well, since the second grade teacher was late. This time, it worked a lot better and the kids actually listened to us. And yet again we were tired as hell when school was over. I hope it’ll be a lot better once we start teaching ourselves, cause I dunno how we’re going to get through a whole week of this otherwise…
While three of my housemates went to a birthday party (the lady had turned 60, so yay, what a party that must have been!), we stayed home to watch another movie, a real chick flick this time :P
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The next day, we finally had our meeting with the teachers to introduce and talk about our project. I think it went well, cause we got a lot of smiles and good comments and even some nice suggestions. Let’s hope it all turns out as planned as well.
Around dinner time, Wesley came over: he was going to make us some saoto soup. Some of us had already had the chance to taste it, but the saoto from this weekend was nothing compared to what we ate today! Really the best soup I’ve ever tasted!
Later this evening we all felt like stretching our legs a bit and we decided to go out. Havana Lounge seemed the best spot, since we hadn’t been there yet. It’s a very nice place: partly terrace, partly inside. There were a lot of people, so it got very hot inside (no airco, not even some fans). That’s where the nice terrace comes in: you can just step outside for a little while, chill out in the little comfy sofas and then head back inside.
By 3am Roché got tired and wanted to go home. His argument “I have to get up to go to work at 7 again” was a pretty good one, so we all went back home.
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Ah, weekend again ^^ We had planned to go to the Saramaccastreet to buy ourselves some nice hammocks, but we hadn’t even reached the end of our street when it started raining. I really didn’t feel like walking around all soaking wet, so Marij and I decided to head back home while the rest continued on.
Of course we didn’t go home to do nothing. We kept ourselves occupied with all sorts of school work. Our lesson plans for next week are sorta ready, my second reflection is done, and we’ve also worked out the planning for the rest of our student teaching.
Around 5.30pm we got a phone call: What are our plans for dinner and if we didn’t have any, were we ok with coming to ‘t vat to get something to eat?
Of course we were and after a bike ride of over half an hour (with the occasional wrong turn) we finally got something to eat.
After dinner we all got on our bikes and head back home. Tineke’s foot is swollen and she really needed to let it rest.
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Today we went hammock shopping. Both Marij and I bought a very nice one! Ellen joinedus, cause she still needed to buy some stuff for school. The rest of the housemates went to Paramaribo Zoo for the day.
We both also bought a panji, which is a piece of cloth some of the inland people wear to show their adulthood. After that a quick stop in Steps, a shoe shop. Bought some very nice slippers! We also met Ellen there again, so off we went to ‘t Vat again for some lunch.
We then walked to Trips, an organisation that organizes trips (duh) to various places more further into the country.
When we got back home, our tummies were empty and complaining about it. So Tineke and I walked to a waroeng (a small place where you can buy some food like bami, nasi, rice, chicken, …) and brought home some yummy bami and nasi for all of us.
We didn’t do much else before going to bed.
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Last day of the weekend which means: sleeping in late! We didn’t do much today but work work and work for school. Since we start our student teaching next week, we really needed to get everything done.
I also got a phone call from Trips: our trip to Brownsberg, Berg en Dal and Stone Island was going to be a bit more expensive than we had first planned… Seemed that there was an entrance fee for Berg en Dal that hadn’t been taken into account yet. But we all really wanted to go, so we’d gladly pay an extra €35 for three days of adventure and fun.
After that, back to work! Never knew how unorganised teaching over here actually is…
Again our stomachs protested about not getting enough food, so we ordered some roti and Roché was so kind to go get it for us.
After that, yes, again schoolwork!
Around 10pm we were fed up with lesson preps and schedules and tests we called it a night and went downstairs. This is the first night that Marij and I have to sleep together, so we changed the sheets and crawled into bed (which actually is a bit too small for the two of us…). After a bit of reading we turned the lights off and went to bed. Our very first official teaching day tomorrow!
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Well, there goes the teaching… When we went to bed yesterday, it was raining. When we got up today, it was STILL raining! No, water was gushing down. Even the locals told us this was the worst they had ever had. Our entire street looked like a giant swimming pool. It almost reached up till our front door… So we called our principal, asking whether it was ok to stay home today, cause there was no way we were getting outside… Luckily he understood and didn’t make a problem of it.
It kept raining till far in the afternoon, so we were locked inside. Too bad it’s not clean water, we could’ve gone for a free swim otherwise!
We watched a movie while some of the others ventured into town, they still needed to go pay for our trip this weekend.
Around 3pm our curiosity won. The three of us put on shorts and went outside to see how deep the water was: it almost reached our knees!
We’ll have to go outside again later on, cause we need to send our reflection to the teachers in Belgium today. Let’s hope it’ll stay dry for a little while longer…
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