Progress

Well, hello again! It's been a while since I've last posted. Sometimes I wonder why it's so hard to do something so simple, but I musn't beat myself up about it, only make an effort to do better from now on!

This winter has been a good one. With the children I teach, I feel like I'm making progress with many of them! In my fifth grade class, I have a mix of both the biggest challenges and the most rewarding successes! In this class, there is a boy who arrived in the beginning of the school year from Eastern Europe not speaking one word of French who now manages to make full sentances in both English and French! There is also a boy who is actively trying to get suspended so he can go home and play with his baby brother. You can imagine the sort of problems he can cause. However, in this same class, there is a group of girls who are constantly asking me for more work to do, homework, further expansion on my lessons, you name it, they can't get enough English! One of these girls lives in the orphanage and typically fails all of her subjects, so her teachers are just shocked when they see her getting nearly perfect scores on her work in English. I must say this makes me proud and motivated to do a good job for the ones who want to learn.

Despite the many positive aspects of this job, I do get frustrated because I know a lot of the parents don't back the teachers at the school and their kids know it. And sometimes I lose my temper. I told one kid that his mother should be ashamed of him. That's probably not good psychology.....but he did grab a pencil out of his classmate's hand and throw it in the garbage without provocation, and when I insisted that he fetch the pencil and apologize, he said, 'Sorry I threw your f***ing pencil in garbage.' His mother would be ashamed!!!!! (I hope.) Whew, deep breaths. Moving on.

In previous posts I have lamented about my failed snowboarding attempts where I spend most of my time recovering from my previous tumble. However, with a little perseverance, I have managed to descend entire blue slopes without falling once! As it turns out, snowboarding can actually be fun! I don't last very long; at the end of the morning I'm pooped whereas the others are just getting started, but I'm happy to know that I can at least hold my own for a couple of hours.

I JUST got my visa finalized, so now I can start looking for odd jobs to supplement my little teaching job. I brushed up my resume in French and English, and let me tell you, if you think resumes are hard in English, just try it out in a second language. Yikes! And I've yet to find out if it's any good or not. I'll probably end up working with tutoring companies that would hire me out to help kids in English. Hopefully these will be older kids. Frankly, the little ones are tiring and it's appealing to get back to more advanced grammar points than telling time or listing colors.

We are currently on our two week winter break and last week I spent babysitting three little boys. This week is much calmer and I find myself wishing there were more people around to help take advantage of the beautiful weather we're having this first week in March! I hope you are enjoying your winters and and taking the time to appreciate the people around you!

Much love!