02/03/10

Want to make a correction: our school is not a private school as I mistakenly said, but a community school, which lies somewhere in between a public and private school here. There is a small tuition fee and the school was not built by the government, but everyone’s salaries are paid by the government. At my school and at Emma’s, many of our colleagues have not received their salary yet this year. This also means that even if there is someone working in the school who is known to be corrupt and stealing money from people and the school, my director does not have the power to get rid of them, but would have to appeal to a bureaucratic system in the government.
I got called Irmã Idurre today on my way into town. Irmã means Sister, like a sister of the church (nun) and Idurre was the Spanish volunteer before Natalia. But close.
Lauren, a volunteer who lives near me, extended for a third year and her official title is PCVL (the jury is still out on whether the L stands for Leader or Liason), so she is part-volunteer and part-PC staff. Part of her job this year is doing site visits with volunteers who live nearby and watching and evaluating lessons of education volunteers. She came today to watch two of my lessons and it was the hugest event ever of the school. All of the students were running out of the classrooms to see the OTHER white girl who was with the white teacher. I had to shut the door of my classroom (which makes it just miserably hot inside) because of the crowd of students peering in. My students were incredibly riled up to have a white visitor in the classroom, and thus were VERY enthusiastic during the lesson, but it went well.