Teaching at Nita

It all starts at 5:30 when I wake up from the sound of my alarm and some chickens crowing too. Now if waking up at 5:30 sounds outrageous; it is. I have learned to drink coffee everyday or else I am sleeping at lunch. At 5:30 I get up and take down my mosquito net, turn off my fan and stumble in the dark to find the light. I then shower and get dressed, wearing my best a sihn and a collar shirt. I am ready by 6 and then eat breakfast. Most days I have oatmeal and we last week we bought cereal. I drink my coffee quickly and leave the house at 6:20. I walk to the bus station which is about a mile and a half away and takes ten minutes. The bus comes at different times but most times comes at 6:30. It takes about a half an hour to get to the bus station at Talaad Sao. The buses are often filled with ten or more people and sometimes you have to sit on the back ( the buses or we call them jumbos they are like trucks with a covering on top and a step on the back). These jumbos are very cheap but can be very slow to get where you want. After I arrive at Talaad Sao I look for the Thong Pong bus but sometimes I miss it or it never comes so I go by jumbo, I arrive at about 7. One jumbo driver always flags me down and I accidently told him my name which causes him to yell it loudly. It is about 10,00 for the trip which takes about a half an hour. I arrive at 7:30 and the bell rings to go to class. I teach thirteen classes over three days. Each class has 30 to 50 kids. The kids are about 10 to 14. The kids are very funny and they make me laugh. Many times I ask the kids to repeat after me and after I say okay or gang lie ( means very good or very smart) and they repeat that as well we all laugh hard. I also brought some stickers with me and it has caused many riots. I had them play BINGO with the new vocab they learned and for if they got bingo I gave them a sticker. So many kids come run up and they tend to leave the bingo boards blank and then fill in as I say new word and so I try to catch the cheaters and then we play a new game and they want more and more stickers. They shout more, more! okay?! At Nita they have not the best black boards and not the best erasers. On the boards there is parts that are chipped and they are course and rough in areas so it is hard to work with them. I have gotten use to the boards and the chalk now. The first few weeks I had chalk everywhere and my skirts were white. I don't know how the other teachers do it but they have no chalk anywhere on them. For erasers most of the time they use a cloth and dip it in water which normally sits on the floor this last week they just bought some new erasers which are more like little pillows and work much better. The students thing that if they dip the cloth in pepsi that it will make the black board blacker and easier to see, the older kids sometimes buy a big bottle and just splash it on the board. This causes the board to be sticky and hard to write on. In some of the older kids class rooms they have board that are plastic and are green which work better and are nice! But this week the older kids and younger kids switched classrooms and so the younger kids used Pepsi on the board and it causes the board to stay sticky and not work to say the least. I mostly work on the board and most of my games and things are on the board so it give many new ideas on not using the board and trying new things. I have learned that with teaching you just go with the flow and even if I make a lesson plan and all these games with the board things happen and you learn to go with it learn new ways. So far teaching has been a joy and the children are so cute and fun. I have struggled but I have also enjoyed each day.