A Hard Week at Work ... Nearly

Been at work now for 4 days and the kids don't actually start til the 22nd. The other Grade 3 teacher hasn't arrived yet so all the resources are piled up in my room waiting to be split between us. Tony has been in every day since Monday which has sped everything up for me. The walls are done and I've got him making maths resources. The other newbies on our floor have been borrowing him to put up their wall displays and fix things for them. It's been quite funny watching him run around for all these single women. The Egyptian dadas think he's funny. The language barrier doesn't seem to matter when Tony's around.

I'm hoping he will be able to volunteer to listen to the kids read because they are all learning English as their second language and there are about 6 that need extra 1:1 support. They have been identified as "Warning / Failure" so I'd like to give them as much exposure as I can because they're not getting it at home and their parents are paying extra to have their kids at our school. The sad thing is the Reading Specialist teacher would have to be 65+ and all she has to say about the kids she's worked with is nothing but negative. I wonder why she's there.

Anyway, we are hoping to get a bank account started next week so we can transfer some money over. The bank will come into school to set them up and we don't need our work permits to do it thank goodness. Sorting out a budget has been interesting. We keep converting to NZ which makes things really cheap and then we remember that we're not earning NZ, we're earning Egyptian, so there's no point converting. Scary thought some days but we've worked out how much we can spend each week until payday... so all is good.

The museum and Saqqara are our next ventures but we have to wait to see what happens now that Morsi, etc have been found guilty. There should be some retaliation from the Brotherhood but we are not really worried about it. We just keep our heads down and don't get into political conversations with the locals unless we know them really well. The Egyptian friends we have are all happy with the current situation. They have been through so much change in the past 10 - 12 year I'm not sure they have any idea what normal democracy is. We are so lucky in NZ!

Woohoo! Tomorrow is the last day of the week and I intend on leaving at 2 again.  There's only so many hours to a working day ...

Nearly Done

Having my own personal helper has meant my walls are all done and I've managed to unpack 12 of the 13 boxes that were dumped in my room by the dadas. Dadas are a group of ladies that carry big heavy boxes, clean, move furniture, find things you need and always have a smile on their faces. I might have to start calling Tony a dada if he comes into school and helps too often. The other teachers on our floor started stealing him away to help with their rooms today ... better keep a closer eye on all these single women.
Here are the after photos of my class walls. You have to imagine half the piles of textbooks, etc taken away as I have to share them with the other Grade 3 teacher who doesn't start til the 10th (Nice for some.) Once the kids are in we can get their work on the walls and it will look more like a kids' space than a teacher's. Someone tell Louise Dempsey I have her new book all ready to sneak into my programme :-)

The Supply Cupboard

The supply cupboard is everything Anna said it would be. It puts our little teacher stationery boxes to shame.
I was able to go into the "room" and choose anything I wanted. The supply lady swapped the 4 blue whiteboard pens I took first for a whole box of 12 and when I asked if they were for the whole year she said I could come back next month for more. Permanent markers, tape, staplers, staples, pens, pencils, clearfiles & refills, huge sheets of coloured paper / card ( I only need 4 to cover a display board), dusters, pastels, felt tips - you name it they had it, except for gun staplers, and you could take as much as you wanted. Teacher heaven!
Tony spent the day at school with me cutting out all my lettering and putting up displays when I couldn't be bothered climbing on top of desks. He did such a great job I think some of the others are going to try stealing him to help in their rooms.
I'll take photos when we're finished and put them on the blog.
We were thinking of Egyptian for dinner but need to finish our pasta from last night. Waste not around here. Egyptian tomorrow maybe...

First Day at Work

The day didn't quite start as planned. The taxi driver I had booked didn't turn up and the one who dropped myself and Bonnie to school took the long route and tried to overcharge us. I say tried because he didn't get away with it. Even the LE10 I gave him was too much.
The staff meeting started at 9am and finished at 9.45am. Nothing like a fast staff meeting! The rest of the day was spent sorting out boxes that had been left in our classes, a lengthy lunch at the local Chinese and stapling up the 2 display boards in my room.
I always knew that both Edendale and Gladstone were well-resourced schools and appreciated the abundance of equipment & resources we had available to us. At MAC it's like stepping back in time to when I first started at Edendale and resources were few but we made the most of what we found (the odd wine box for reading books and maths equipment) or shared with each other. Free ice cream containers, wine boxes and plastic containers are a rarity. I had to walk up and down the corridor in search of a stapler to put up my display boards and finally found one that worked after half an hour. Would you believe there is one gun stapler in the school? If you are heading to Egypt please put one in your luggage with multiple packs of staples. Some of you know how much I love using gun staples and changing my displays :-). That should last me 2 years.
The teachers are a great bunch, mostly American but I met a Kiwi, a Swiss and a Brit today. No Aussies or Canadians. There are only 400 kids, Kindergarten (5yrs) up to Grade 12 and the elementary school has the majority of the children. I think it's between half and 2/3 of the roll are elementary. I'm looking forward to meeting my class on the 22nd as the Reading Support teacher spent quite a bit of time giving me the rundown on them this morning. I'm sure they'll be just as lively as all the other kids I've taught over the years even though there's only 16 of them.
Tomorrow is another day of sorting and trying to decipher the curriculum and planning. I'm sure I'll get my head around it in the next week before the other Grade 3 teacher arrives and we can split the resources that are in boxes in my room, between us. Last year there was only 1 Grade 3 class. Could you imagine having to share 1 class's resources between 2? Going to be a challenge!

Virgoes make the best cleaners

Before and after photos of our 3 hour cleaning stint on Wednesday.

The Ace Club

Last night we popped along to the ACE Club, which is a watering hole for expats. Only Egyptians who are married to expats can go into the club and you have to become a member to belong to it. It's the only place we know that has pork so each time I've been I've eaten ... pork. 

Iti made some new friends with some locals who made themselves at home and found him in my handbag. I pulled him out of the bag to see what they would do and sure enough they treated him as one of their own.

From left: Anna (wife of Ahmed & Senior School English)), Shannon (Middle School Social Studies), Bonnie (Grade 2) and Bill (Bonnie's husband). Shannon and Bonnie are newbies like me.

From left: Debra (Grade 5), Joanne (Grade 2) and Dr Farnsworth (Head of Elementary aka my boss). Debra & Joanne are newbies too.

Once we become members this will be our local. At the moment we pay LE20 to be visitors signed in by Dr Farnsworth which can be a drag if he is not around. Our other option is to stay home and invite others over which may have to happen for a while so we don't drink on our own. That wouldn't look good :-)
 

Room 212

I got to see my classroom for the first time today. It's on the second floor at the far end of the corridor. There must be something about me being at the end of corridors. Hopefully with this classroom I can hide away :-) The room is very different to Room 25 and I'm looking forward to getting some colour on those newly painted walls. I'm not sure if I can swap those desks and chairs for smaller ones as the choices I've seen in other classes are pretty limited.

 Only one computer and that's the teacher's.

 Display space is limited (.but I brought blutack)

 I have air conditioning!!!

This is the front of the school where the kids enter.