Another One Down

This week was kind of so-so work wise.

I felt a little bit better with some of the kids that I was actually able to plan lessons out of the book with...but how do you get 5 year olds to sit and help you with book activities?  They don't seem to have the attention span necessary to do it, and they neither understand nor care that you have a certain amount that you have to cover with them in each lesson.

In other lessons it doesn't necessarily help me that not all of my pupils have their books yet.  I get told "you can start in the book now," but nobody has mentioned whether or not things need to be photocopied beforehand and I start class feeling like an idiot for not having this knowledge or being prepared for it.  It's fine when I'm at the main school in Kozienice, but it becomes a problem when I'm teaching at Ilza or Jedlnia because we don't have access to a printer or a photocopier since we are in actual schools instead of a building owned by English College.

As the weeks progress these things will iron out.

Sarah and I are both still frustrated by the small children that we have to teach on a regular basis.  On Friday we miraculously had the same age group at the same time and were therefore able to share the classes--which was bloody FANTASTIC!!!  Neither of us were entirely sure if they were even the same classes we'd had last week because it was like a breath of fresh air!  And we actually had enough energy for the classes that came afterward because we took the small children in shifts.

Now I just need to figure out how to get my one group of ten year olds to stop behaving like the five year olds.  It will work out.

Tomorrow I'm going to one of the other schools so that I can observe how more experienced teachers handle the classes and maybe take my observations back to Sarah. 

Some of the gems from my students this week included "I am a dog," and "my mind" in response to a game in which they were required to name something that was dirty.

The view from the school in Ilza

The view from my classroom.  It's dusk and it was taken through a window so the picture is a little grainy.

In the enormous flurries of last-minute class planning, we haven't really had much opportunity to spend a lot of time on ourselves.  The only respite we've really had from work was this weekend, since we spent it preparing to spend Canadian Thanksgiving with our American co-workers.  The potluck idea failed slightly since everyone else was just as busy as we were, but it was still a good meal with shockingly little left over.  Since our oven is fairly small and whole turkeys difficult to come by, we did a roast chicken with a couple of turkey legs that we de-boned and stuffed prior to roasting in the midst of our extra stuffing...

The idea was excellent in theory -- and it still seems like a workable idea, but I think the practice needs a little tweaking before I can get it right.  I think the turkey was just left in a little too long and the bread probably sapped most of the moisture out of the turkey leg in spite of copious amounts of butter being applies to both the stuffing on the inside of the leg and underneath the skin.

The chicken on the other hand, was so moist and tender that the leg came off when Sarah tried to test its readiness.  The broth had burnt off, but somehow we managed to reconstitute it into a shockingly palatable gravy.  Preparing it was interesting, though.  As I was rinsing it out we discovered that part of the reason the chicken had so much skin around the neck was because the butcher who had prepped it left the cervical vertebrae more or less intact.  Before I could even finish cleaning it I had to sever the remainder of the neck to open up the whole a little more.  Once it was rinsed I couldn't even get all the water out from under the skin--but I think that only contributed to the deliciousness in the end.

We boiled the potatoes, and prepped all the ingredients necessary for Kris to make a fantastic pot of garlic mashed potatoes that I am quite pleased to say we have some left overs from.  They will be extra delicious tomorrow.  No pumpkin pie, sadly.  It seems canned pumpkin pie filling does not exist in Radom, and with everything else we've had going there wasn't enough time nor oven space to roast a pumpkin and do it the hard way.  That's alright...

 

After the feast.

We'll just do it in November when the Americans have their turn at hosting Thanksgiving, since we are one of the lucky few who actually have an oven.