First day of Work

I woke up pretty early (especially for me) – around 8am. Got dressed and walked to the grocery store. I couldn’t really tell if it was open yet, but I walked in anyways because I saw someone else go in. I am pretty sure that only workers were supposed to be there, but everyone (probably about 15 people) who worked there bowed at me and said hello. I got some cleaning supplies and rice. Sara, the bag you gave me will come in handy because they have plastic bags, but don’t like to give them out. I actually think they might charge for them, but they didn’t charge me. I walked home, got bored and walked around again. Everything looked closed. I asked Claire about it and she said most things don’t open until 11am, except the grocery stores.

This was the first day of school for me. It was the first day of Spring term for the kids, who were all antsy because they had just had a long break. There are 5 terms for this school: 2 spring and 1 fall which are “normal” and 1 summer and 1 winter which are “intensive”. My current schedule has me working MW 3:15 to 9:30 with 40 minute break, TTh 2:45 to 9:45 with a 50 minute break and F 3:15 to 6:25. Those times include being there an hour before class starts. Each class is 40 minutes. I have a total of 14 classes with grades from about kindergarten to about 7^th grade. All the kids basically speak English fluently and are just working on understanding, grammar and pronunciation. This is an after school program, so they all have regular school too from about 8 am to 12. I thought my first day went pretty well. The older kids are much easier to teach because they understand more and I can basically just talk with them. The younger kids think they understand, but don’t, and it’s harder to get them to talk.

That night, after school, I went to Pizza Bingo to get a pizza for dinner. They have pictures of what the pizzas look like and then English names too, but the people at the store don’t speak English. So I pointed to a vegetable pizza: onions, green pepper, tomato and corn. For some reason, other countries think we like corn on pizza. Corn was on about every pizza they had. They were very nice and gave me a frequent buyer card. Here’s a picture of the box (which they wrap up so you can carry it) and the pizza. You might think, as I did, that the little green container in the corner holds marinara sauce. You would be wrong: it has pickles. The pizza itself was very good – I had half for dinner and half for breakfast the next morning.

Pizza Vegetable

Pizza Bingo: Happy Taste