More Orientation, Teachers, & Getting Ready

COLOMBIA TIP #10 – Do not flush toilet paper down the toilet; instead place it in the garbage can beside you.

Yep, you read that correctly.  I guess the toilets don’t do so well with the flushing of extra materials, so toilet paper goes in the garbage bins…

Last Thursday the rest of the teachers had their first day of school with us.  All of the teachers and administrators sat in a big circle in the gym area and Jaime the School Director said we were going to go around and say our name, where we were from, and how long we’ve been at the school.  My jaw dropped – we were going to have to go through about 50-75 people!  Plus, some of the Colombian teachers don’t speak English and I certainly don’t speak much Spanish, so for some people I didn’t catch their name or anything unfortunately.  When it came around to my turn, I added, “Necesito practicar mi español”, aka “I need to practice my Spanish.”  I got a few laughs!  That phrase has become my new favourite saying.  After the huge introduction circle, we had a bit of time before we had to be at our next set of meetings.  One of the Colombian teachers approached me and asked, “Are you a golfer?”  He must’ve seen my Titleist book bag (thanks Marsey & Gramps!) and took a wild guess!  I later found out his name is Carlos and he’s the Music teacher.

One day I ate lunch with Carlos and a couple other teachers and we were having a conversation about sports.  I asked Carlos if there were any good golf courses in Armenia (apparently there’s only a private one, so we can’t go there unless we meet a nice member).  He asked if I had heard of Camilo Villegas and I was really excited to tell him the story that had just happened at the RBC Canadian Open just a week before I came here – as Camilo tee’d off for the Pro-Am, I called his name told him I was going to Colombia the next day!  He was fairly impressed and I asked if there were any specific places I should visit.  We had a nice chat!  I showed Carlos the picture of Camilo and I and he thought it was so cool!

(Camilo & I at the RBC Canadian Open the day before I came to Colombia)

But then Carlos one-upped me by saying that he used to play golf with Camilo back in the day, which is pretty sweet.  I also found out that one of the Grade 8s is some sort of Junior Champion in all of Colombia, so I’ll likely have him in my Grade 9 class next year!

Throughout these days, there have been a few more foreign teachers I’ve had a chance to meet and talk to:
-Charlotte (Grade 6 English & Social Studies; London, England – 3rd year here, but 1st year as a teacher as she started out as an assistant)
-Stephanie (Grade ?; Florida – 5th year here).  Both of her parents are Colombian, but she gave up her Colombian citizenship in order to work as a foreigner here
-Emily (Grade ?; New Jersey – 3rd year here).  She married a Colombian and had a baby boy last year!

Having staff meetings has been pretty interesting with the language differences.  Everything takes twice as long because it needs to be said in both Spanish and English.  Sometimes there are stretches of a few minutes in only Spanish where I get completely lost and frustrated as I try to pick up words that I recognize.  Then we’ll usually get the short story of the entire conversation that just happened.  It’s definitely helping with my understanding (a little, I think).  However, there have been some important meetings that have been only in Spanish.  The Special Cases meeting where we learned about some of the IEPs and about specific students that have difficulties was all in Spanish!  I tried to Google Translate the writing on the Powerpoints to got a better idea, though there was a little English translation happening.  The other one was the Emergency Procedures meeting, as in what to do in case of fire, earthquake, etc.  Probably necessary to know, especially with the huge earthquake that Armenia had in 1999.  Hopefully we have enough common sense to guide us!

We also got the keys to our classroom – I’m in room C4.  This is my hallway:

It’s outside.  Not in a building.  I think that’s one of my favourite things about this school, as silly as that is.  My classroom is just on the left, but you can’t really see it from this picture.  They even put our names outside of our doors, which looks very official.  Unfortunately, mine looks like this:

But don’t worry!  It’s going to be changed.  Perhaps I should request it to say Katie instead?  They seem to have some difficulties with “Katherine” here – so far my classroom nameplate has been incorrect, my email was spelled “Kathrine”, and on my medical check up form it was listed as “Kateherine.”  I’m considering legally changing my name to just KT.  Thoughts?