Getting Old Fast

The students at my school - especially the younger ones - have developed an annoying little habit. They just sit and watch me as I work.

I won’t lie - at first it was a little cute, a little enduring, but now it’s just really annoying. In between classes many days I will look up and see a half-dozen faces just staring at me, intrigued by the presence of this new American who they have in their midst. Once in a while one of them will say ‘hello’ in Russian, upon which the others immediately break out in laughter. They even sometimes will push each other into the room, shut the door, and start to laugh, like they are pushing someone into a lions den and then fleeing before the carnage happens.

Also, I teach only half of the sixth graders - my partner teacher takes the other half - and those whom she teaches have become rather enamored with me and my presence in school. One day I stepped outside to send a text message on my phone and within one minute I had seven sixth-graders surrounding me, just watching me write on my phone and quietly saying things like "it’s a Motorola." Then they asked me if I was free of if I had a lesson, and when I told them that I was free they followed me into my room, sat silently and watched me work for a few minutes, then started asking me questions. It wasn’t bad at first but now they want to do it all the time . . .
However, it stopped early this week when all the kids were watching me do nothing and another teacher came up to them, grabbed one of them by the arm, and started to loudly say, "What are you looking at? What is so interesting there?" That stopped the staring, to sat the least.

Notes:
- Last Tuesday the librarian at our school came into my classroom and asked me if I would be able to work one-on-one and tutor her daughter who is in 11th grade. "She knows nothing," said the mom, and she also told me that she would gladly pay me for my time. The bad news was, I can’t help her daughter for money - its strict Peace Corps policy. The good news is that I’m more than glad to help her free of charge. We’ve had our first two lessons, just covering the basics - verb conjugation, present tense of the verb ‘to be’, and pluralization. Not only is it good for the daughter but for me as well, because while in class I speak only English, with her I speak mostly Russian and it’s a great chance for me to practice.

I also realized a huge reason why it is so difficult to study English if Russian is your first language - the ten most common words in English are: ‘the’, ‘of’ , ‘and’, ‘a’, ‘to’, ‘in’, ‘is’, ‘you’, ‘that’, and ‘it’. Russian doesn’t have ‘of’, ‘the’, ‘a’, ‘is’, or ‘it.’

- The director of my school is only in the school building a few times a week, three days at most. I thought it was really odd until my host mom told me something - turns out, he only has one lung

- I spent last weekend in Chisinau at a conference for teachers of English that was held on Saturday from 10:00 to 5:00 with a break for lunch. There were a few hundred English teachers gathered at the largest university in Chisinau, and it was a good success. I didn’t present anything, just went to get new information on how to teach. And I was lucky too - my plan was to get on the bus at 6:00 AM that leaves my village and attend the conference, knowing that I would have to leave it early so I could catch the last bus to my village. However, on the bus the director of TEFL teachers for Peace Corps called me and told me that if I wanted I could stay in a hotel for the night that Peace Corps would pay for. So I did, spending Saturday night with two current volunteers who have been here for a year and talking about life, here in America. It was a great night.

- If I do something at home that my host mom doesn’t like, she’ll refer to me as "Mr. Andrew." I know I’m in trouble when I hear those words. For example, last weekend it was my goal to return to home on a bus at10:00, meaning I would leave Chisinau at 8:30 in the morning - I called my host mom to tell her such. However, I had to do too much work in the morning and didn’t leave until 1:30 on a bus - but I forgot to tell my host-mom of the change in details. When I got home I was alone but she quickly arrived and when she saw me preceded to say, "Mr. Andrew . . . ." - she was bugged that I didn’t either A)come home early, or B) call to tell otherwise.

- My partner-teacher’s son has asthma and this past week he was in the hospital and she was with him, meaning that I had to teach all the students. My biggest concern was classroom management with the class size doubled -

- Friday night at my school was a talent show to see which student would become, "Miss Autumn." There were five girls in the competition, each of which put on different shows to show how they deserved the title (everything in good fun). I was asked to be a part of the jury, which made the experience all that much more interesting.

- Finally, I will end with one of the funniest things I’ve heard in a while. At my fourth grade class on Thursday the students were talking before the lesson started and one of them commented on the other’s dictionary. "Is that new?" asked the first? "Yeah", said the second, and in a bragging manner she added, "it’s has 50,000 words.""Wow!," responded the first in a shocking manner. It was the highlight of my day.