Saturday, August 23, 2014

One more award!



I forgot an award!  Dreadfully sorry and I hope you can forgive me.  To give some background details about this final award, for the year 6 exam, I gave them the poem Oliphaunt which has lines such ‘grey as a mouse, big as a house, nose like a snake’ and ‘flapping, big ears.’  I asked the students to tell me what name we give this animal.  I didn’t get any Calvinist (as in Calvin and Hobbes, not the religious guy) responses like ‘Frank’ but I did get a simply amazing one.  So the Gerald Durrell Award for Animal Recognition goes to the Year 6 student who told me that the animal with flapping big ears was a shark.  Well done and remind me to get you a child’s encyclopaedia of animals for your birthday.

No award for this one but I would now like to post a speech that another of my class 6s wrote.  Every morning we have a Dzongkha speaker and an English speaker.  Since most kids just copy their speeches from wherever, I worked hard with my classes so they would write their own.  This one was just so sweet that I feel I have to post it and I feel I should point out that I had no idea about the topic until I saw the first draft.  Fortunately, I was ill the day it was delivered or I would have been quite embarrassed.  I have left the grammar and spelling exactly as the student had it in her first draft.

Early to bad and early early to rise makes man healthy and wise.  Repected principal, Bice principal toD teacher and my brothers and sisters  Today I am (No, I’m not leaving her name in, but I like the implication that she changes who she is day to day) from class VIB we like speak on the Topic favourite teacher here I begin.

We all the students have our own favourite teacher.  So I as a student also have my own favourite teacher.  My favourite teacher is miss Arwen.  She is from Australia.  she has white complaction.  She likes to sailing when she was in Australia.  her ship name is Jarmes crack.  She have snake and Little Dragon as her pet.  The Little Dragon she called as Teo's and snake as Eve (I made sure Padraig was included in her second draft and even wrote his name out phonetically.  Poor Padraig wouldn’t want to be forgotten!).  She is Live in samdinkha near the archery ground.  she loves to reed Books and listening song, and she love animals.  she gave us candy and small sticker as a gift when we hold Top mark in class text.(Yes, I’ve resorted to bribery)
Solastly I would like to say I Love my miss Arwen as well as other teacher too.

Awwwww!  I’m just so proud that all my lessons on grammar and spelling seem to have, well, not done anything.  But at least they know about sailing and reptiles! (And no ‘little swot’ comments, please!)

Another wonderful thing that happened was that I finally achieved one of the greatest teacher clichés!  I often get given things by my students.  I’ve been given sag (spinach), chillies, passionfruit, guavas and pomegranates but earlier this week…
 
It didn't even have any worms in it!
… someone gave me an apple for teacher!  I’ll reassure mom by saying that I washed and peeled it before eating.

I shall begin this next anecdote by saying that all is well and my feet are completely dry.  Last Wednesday, I was making some well-deserved popcorn when my doorbell rang.  I assumed it would be students either asking for homework help or selling cheese.  It was students but they weren’t selling anything or asking me to do their homework for them.  Instead they both started talking extremely fast and incoherently.  I asked them to slow down (they were both year 5 students so I don’t teach either) and managed to hear, ‘Flag coming from Lunana. Gautem Sir already gone.’  I guessed that some holy artefact was being brought to Samdinkha and one of the teachers, Gautem Sir, had gone to meet it.  I didn’t see what that had to do with me and wanted to return to my popcorn.  I wondered if all the teachers were meant to meet the visiting lama.  The students seemed concerned that I wasn’t reacting to what they had said so they started off talking quickly at the same time and kept saying that a flag was coming.  I told them to slow down and asked one of them to clearly say what was coming.  Again one of them said ‘flag’ but added ‘big river.’  Ah, a flood.  Well, at least I finally understood.  I then spent about 2 minutes running round and shoving important things into my backpack.  These included my passport, Jerry, meds and Druklet.  Just the bare essentials.  I put on my boots, grabbed a bottle of water and headed out. 
The river was an amazing colour.  Imagine Charlie and the Chocolate Factory but sadly, I doubt it would have tasted very nice.  I hurried up the hill and stood with some of my students and their families watching the river and wondering what would happen.  How high was the river expected to rise?  Would we all head to the school and have a slumber party in the hall?  It was about then that I realised that I had forgotten my toothbrush.  After a little while, people started to return to Samdinkha and I decided that I’d risk it.  There is an alarm that is meant to go off if we’re really in danger and it hadn’t sounded so I thought I’d go back and pack my bag properly.  I made a pact with my neighbours that they’d tell me if they were heading out.  I’m pretty sure I could have squeezed into their car if it were an emergency.
Fortunately, the popcorn was fine so I enjoyed it while packing properly and letting my health buddy know that there was a potential situation.  I wasn’t panicking or even terribly worried but I have to admit, I slept in clothes that I wouldn’t mind climbing a hill in and didn’t sleep with my earplugs in.
In the morning, the river was back to its normal monsoon-grey and I found out that there had been a landslide which caused a little dam to form which eventually burst, raising the river and turning it Lindt 99% cocoa-brown.  I think some students were disappointed as they were hoping to get out of school.  I was ever-so-slightly relieved.  I do find it interesting, however, that if the apocalypse comes, it won’t be announced by horsemen but instead by two girls jabbering incoherently.

Hugs hugs!

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