Happy Sarah’s (fellow BCF-er) and King’s Birthday! Because of them we now get three days off to
recuperate after the first few days of school.
To be fair, my first few days of teaching have actually been quite
enjoyable but I’m still quite happy for a rest.
If you’re interested about what I’ll be teaching this year, and let’s
face it, who wouldn’t be, I’ve got the same grades and subject as last year, 6,
7 and 8 English. Happily that means very
few names to learn in comparison with last year as I already know the years 7
and 8 kids. So only 27 names instead of
last year’s 96.
I am happy to report that I already have an unintentionally
funny answer. In a poem the word ‘hue’
came up and, after learning the definition, the students had to write a
sentence using the word to show understanding.
Unfortunately, one student didn’t pay much attention to the spelling of
the word and so told me that their favourite hun was green.
I personally don’t have a
favourite hun as I only know one but if I had a favourite it is very likely that
they would pretty green now too. Or at
least bits of them would be.
My current
year 7s are happily very eager to learn more of what I taught them last year,
at least in the field of My Little
Pony. Perhaps the international
brony community could extend a friendly hoof to my year 7s. It could be a fun pen-pal project.
The other
news is that I have been made a house master.
Yes, a role which often includes helping students with sporting events
has been filled by me. I suppose I
should probably look up the rules to football and volleyball. All I know about them right now is the first
you lift your shirt over your head when you score and there is an offside rule
which women aren’t meant to understand and the second the aim of the game is to
have your forearms turn as red as possible, or at least, that’s what happened
to me in P.E. class. Fortunately there
are also literary competitions, half in English, half in Dzongkha, and a
Dzongkha teacher has been appointed to help me with the Dzongkha and the
cultural dance competitions. The most
exciting thing for me about being a house master is that my house is Raven
House. My first thought was about how
many literature-inspired cheers we can come up with. There
are the obvious like ‘Takin shall win Nevermore!’ but I wondered if we could
think of something involving Odin and his ravens, Huginn and Muninn. The only other literary ravens I could think
of were the raven who flew from the ark and never returned and Ravenclaw house
from Harry Potter. I am hesitant to use the latter as I decided
many years ago that I would be a proud Hufflepuff (yes I would and will explain
why if you are confused) so it seems wrong to use Ravenclaw references in
cheers. There is, of course, another problem
that nobody would understand the cheers but I often find that nobody knows what
I’m talking about so it might not matter.
And the last bit of news is that I have
started my choir. About 14 students
signed up for my singing club and we had our first session on Wednesday (the 19th
of February if I’m not able to post this for a while). The first thing I did was make sure that
shoulders stayed down while breathing and was pleased to see how receptive they
were to breathing and voice exercises. I
think the favourites were the sirens and being snakes (they went ‘ss, ss, ss’
for a diaphragm exercise). We then
learned Yellow Submarine as I felt a
repetitive, small range song with a trippy cartoon to accompany it was an easy
thing to start with. I’m hoping I won’t
have drop-outs as kids are allowed to swap clubs for the first week or so but
I’ll have to wait and see. I did have a
few extras as most clubs started with a discussion about what they wanted to do
and after that the kids were given free time.
Some of my singers got nervous when it was obvious that they had an
audience outside so I made the audience either come and join in or go and find
something else to do. I can completely
empathise with not wanting an audience too early in the singing process. I also learned that apparently I was the only
teacher who planned an activity for the first club session, so go me! I’m afraid my club will be more of a
dictatorship than the other clubs seem to be but I have told students that they
may suggest songs but I also said that I couldn’t promise that we would be able
to use them. Many of the kids like
Justin Bieber and no. Just no.
It is now a couple weeks later and I’m back in Thimphu as
Punakha is having its tshechu (religious festival) so we get six days off. I’m celebrating by sitting in Ambient and
eating French fries. And just a few kilometres out of Samdinkha
we saw a deer! Not entirely sure which
species but it was a deer. Funnily
enough, it wasn’t as thrilled to see us as we were to see it and so did not
pose for cameras which were hurriedly being dug out of bags. I can’t really blame it especially since the
caretaker’s van is in worse shape than usual and so makes more strange noises
and produces a lot of smoke.
After a few weeks of classes, I have come to the conclusion
that my students think that I don’t have enough work to do and so they have
helpfully forgotten EVERYTHING I taught them last year. Or they’ve decided that word types are unfair
and fascist and every word can be a noun, verb, adjective or whatever else it
wants. ‘He clarity the speak’ is much
more equal!
I shall leave you with the most delightfully assonating
phrase which I made up while getting youtube clips of the new group animals and
that is ‘Puggle Hugs!’ Puggle Hugs to
all, especially T’eo and Padraig!
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