First off, Happy St Patrick’s Day! It is a holiday that I don’t think anyone has heard of here. Today I tried my first crayfish and it was delicious! I’m sure I can take some great pictures of them at the crayfish festival over Easter weekend.
Things are kind of chugging along at school. I have to say I’ve been kind of at a low point recently with work. Thankfully, my APCD came for a site visit [on my birthday of all days!] and after talking with him I was glad with what he proposed and think that Term Two will be a lot better. The main problem is that I’ve been way stressed lately with a really packed schedule and SO much marking to do, all of which has to be done at the school because it’s too heavy to take on my 40 minute journey home. That added to select kids being surprisingly mean to me has not been nice. But we’re being proactive and the schedule thing will get fixed next term [fingers crossed] and I’m moving classrooms next week to the room right next to the office, which will hopefully curb the behavior of the naughty ones.
Although some things have been unpleasant lately, I can’t leave out the little things that have been brightening my day:
- 4 out of 5 days this week I received apples, all from different learners. It was so cute and made me feel like such a teacher! Also some of the kids have started saying ‘thank you for teaching me’ when they leave my classroom, which makes me so happy! Anddd I just marked some essays where the kids had to describe what their class would be if they were the teacher, and a lot of them said they would teach like Miss Nowlin, whooo!
- 2 normally very badly behaved kids have dramatically changed their behavior recently. One of them I think has changed because he got in trouble with someone, but the other has changed because he now comes to my reading club after school two days a week! He’s actually trying now!
- I think I’ve mentioned that my big project right now is getting the library set up and functioning. This past week we’ve been electing prefects to help run it, and it was so exciting to see that almost all the kids wanted this responsibility. They would really thrive on leadership groups/after-school programs, so hopefully next term I can work on that.
- On my birthday I got 10 cards from my learners. So sweet! Also, let me introduce you to the newest addition to my life here in luda – her name is lulu and she is maybe 4-5 months old. She’s so friendly and cuddles with me when she’s not bouncing off the walls [literally] with energy.
Also, I had a huge revelation yesterday. We were celebrating Megan’s birthday after our Shelter House meeting, and one of the committee members started imitating an American accent. The weird voice he made is EXACTLY what the kids have been doing to me! All along I knew they were making fun of me, but had no idea they were making fun of my accent – it doesn’t sound anything like an American accent in my opinion! It’s really nasal and high-pitched/fast/mumbling, hard to do it justice when writing about it. Now I know what they’re doing!
P.S. It is raining right now in Luderitz. HUGE DEAL. The last time I saw rain was in early December when I was at Reconnect in Windhoek. It's awesome!!!
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