Hump Day of the Last Week of Teaching

Well, only two more days of teaching left now! Today was an "easy day" since my mentor wanted me to show a movie to my grade eight students since they are mid-exam week. They watched "Mean Girls" since it semi-relates to bullying. It's so funny because I would NEVER want to (or be allowed to) show that movie to even a high school class in the United States. It made me feel a little funny, but the rules as far as that type of thing goes are much less strict. Similarly, teachers can take pictures of the students here without any questions asked. When I had to tape a lesson in the US, each student needed to fill out a form and have it signed by their parents, then I needed to rearrange the classroom to assure that those students were not in the video. Also, I had a student ask if we could be facebook friends yesterday. That freaked me out, because I would NEVER think of "friending" one of my students from the USA. I deliberated and tried to avoid it, telling him, "Maybe once I'm back in America," even though it made me feel SO uncomfortable. Very different, as many teachers here are "friends" with their students. I never really realized how ingrained within me the American standards of professionalism had become until now! Showing the video was somewhat comical, though, to see how the students' reactions were so different than in America. They laughed at totally different things than American students would find humorous, and their reactions were hilarious!

Also, I forgot to mention that I got a package in the mail at the beginning of this week!  My mentor teacher from home sent me "Happy Thanksgiving" cards made by each of my students from home! It was such a nice surprise and very inspiring after a lonnng and difficult few days. Some of them were hilarious, giving me advice on how to deal with my students here, Thankgiving jokes/stories...others were just sweet, and some students drew me a Thanksgiving meal or a big, juicy hamburger, haha, little do they know that WAS our Thanksgiving feast! The perfect way to start the week! And I will say, opening them here I was able to see the huge contrast between my groups of students here and in the US. The differences in maturity level, student-teacher rapport, and artistic ability were pretty noticeable!

I will teach tomorrow and Friday as well. Alaina and I just updated our Bucket List to see what we have left to do, and there are still several things! Since we are already well over our 60 days and our role at the school is winding down, our supervisor agreed to let us take off one or two days next week to do some last minute sightseeing, such as go to the Flora Expo, National Palace Museum, visit a mountain with hot springs, etc....So, our only school obligation for  next week is to bake the teachers some heavily-requested apple pies in the home-ec room!