11/01/10

Last night my director wasn’t around after dinner because she had to take a girl with malaria to the hospital. I wanted to talk to her about the schedule for today because she had said the pedagogical director would be here this week, but I toyed with the idea of just going to bed and asking in the morning since I didn’t know how long she would be. I decided to wait for her and when she came back and I asked if the pedagogical director would here. She told me yes he would and so would all of my colleagues, we were starting work at 8am in the morning. Good thing I asked.
Had a staff meeting this morning with our director (the sister) and our pedagogical director. I was the only new staff member (as if I didn’t already stick out like a sore thumb) so I had to give myself a short introduction. My school is offering 11th grade for the first time this year (it only went through 10th grade before) and it was already overcrowded, so we are now facing a major shortage of classrooms and teachers. Since matriculation is still going on through tomorrow, nobody knows for sure what discipline or grade they are teaching, so at least I am not the only one. All of my colleagues were really nice and interested in talking to me. One colleague said “oh Chicago! Is that close to San Francisco?” Another colleague said “oh, you’re a child of Obama!” Another was very intrigued by how many people of different ethnicities live in America and how we don’t have one history, but many different ones. She called America the country of the future and stated that the problems with the world are Asia and Africa.
Our director is a woman (obviously) and I have at least five female colleagues, which is a ton for the secondary level. There wasn’t a whole lot of work to be done today since we don’t know yet what we are teaching, so we did a lot of sitting around. And for the few tasks we did have, my colleagues were pretty content to just shoot the shit and were not consumed as I was by the need to get everything done as quickly as possible. Tomorrow we will be split into disciplines to plan the curriculum for the year.
After work I took a nap. It’s too hot to lie in bed today, so I aimed my fan at me and just sprawled on the floor on my straw mat.