I couldn't believe the size of her...

Faithful readers-

First of all, I do apologize for the delay in updates- I have received several angry emails demanding new posts, so I am sacrificing a perfectly good Wednesday night to sit in bed and write.*

TEACHING IS GOING SO WELL. I love it. This has been a particularly fun week because I have gotten to spend more and more time interacting with the students. Additionally, I teach two lessons before school on Mondays and Fridays. It's practice for the 8th grade English competition and around 8 kids usually show up. I have a considerable amount of freedom in how I teach them, and I have been designing lessons based on how they have done on their practice exams. In last weeks' practice exam, students were given the following list to include in an essay:
1. What kind of a student you are
2. What kind of a student you'd like to be
3. What a typical student is like

In general, they failed miserably. 3 students turned in the assignment, and of those three, not a single one had answered all of the questions. The best response that I got was 'I-m a normal student, i-m kinda awesome. I'm in the 8th grade. Sometimes I get bured in school. I wud like to be a smart student.' (obviously, they got points for stating that they are awesome. Mostly because I have definitely given the same response at several times in my life).
Based on their lack-of-completion/fail, I decided to organize an activity where I gave students 7 partial sentences, and gave them the mission to write a creative story including at least 5 completed sentences. They thrived. Sentences included:
In rained for...
I couldn't believe the size of her...
It was a cold, dark, windy...
boys have cooties, at least that's what my
I heard, but I didn't believe

If ANYONE would be brave enough to write a story and email it to me, that would be awesome. I would love for my students to read what you have written! Here are some excerpts from my students' best:
#1It was a cold, dark, windz night. Ther ewas a fridge called Biffz. When I woke up, I came to the fridge and took some milk and started drinking. It was grey. Then I took some ham, it was also grez. I didn-t know what happened... there were too many things grey. (Story goes on to tell about a mysterious woman coming in, waving her arms over the fridge and putting everything back to its normal color).
#2...the girls couldn't believe the size of her cookie. They thought it was made of paper, but it was made of snow because it was winter. They went into the kitchen. It was cold, dark, and windy in the fridge. Girls thought the electricity was down, but no. That fridge had gone mad. The boys looked up ''Cookie Jar Goes Wrong'' on the internet...
#3- Starts out as a ghost story, like everything she has written thus far: ...Something creeked: We were scared. Very scared. And then in the next moment a woman appeared in front of us. She was very scary. We screamed. But not because we were so scared, but because we couldn't believe the size of her ears! She was like an elephant...

Maybe those segments do not make any sense to you. I could already be blinded by getting to know these kids and understanding what they mean. However, hopefully they provided some substance to better imagine my life over here.


In two weeks, we will finish with this particular before-school-lesson, but I think that I am going to ask the principal if I can continue to host a creative writing workshop. Thoughts? I think that I'm alright at creative writing... I guess it's between that or a tutorial on how to Rick Roll.

'Till next time, homies. With love, Nika

*Ok, truthfully, I just received one email about the blog. Thanks dad. Hope this suffices. And I have absolutely no energy to move from this very comfortable spot where I am eating garden fresh strawberries and chocolate and drinking piping hot mint tea.

Animal Keychains

Today I went hiking (in the wonderfully beautiful Alps) with my new friends. Since I'm super hip and cool and mature, my friends are often older than me. In this case, my friends are 75 and 50.

They (Jože and Marjana) are members of the Radovljica hiking club (which, by the way, also has a new American member- jaz), so they were super prepared to go with all of the right gear: Those awesome shirts that sweat just magically disappears from, hiking pants that fit better than my new, super practical hiking-sort-pants (2 in one), hiking sticks, etc. However, things that I did not expect to see on on their professional hiking packs were animal keychains. I'm not kidding. They're huge here, and I do not really understand why. Young people, old people, college boys, everyone has these keychains. I went on a date (don't worry people, nothing serious... sort of just happened) with a 25 year old boy who had a tigger keychain on his keys. When I made fun of him about it, he did not get the joke. Then I realized it's not just him- it's everyone.

Basically, I am asking that you immediately send me keychains so I don't have to be left out. I mean, If you can't beat up, join em?

Observing Americans Observe Slovenia

BACK AT SCHOOL- But Mondays are all the same, right?

Wrong.

Today our school was visited by 35 retired Americans, which apparently happens about once a month. These Americans are on a tour through Slovenia and Croatia, and they stop through a few schools as well. I would imagine that the tour company has chosen our school because of A. It's proximity to Bled (ridiculously beautiful place a 10 minute bikeride away) B. It's neat history (Radovljica was the home of actor and educator Anton Tomaž Linhard, an important player in Slovene history), and C. The wide variety of students that attend (i.e. it's before the decision of Grammar School or Technical School or some other high school). We were prepared for them.

I am not quite sure what the Americans did as soon as they arrived (you know, I have to teach every once and a while), but after a bit they were taken to the auditorium where the ridiculously talented kids showed them a bit of what they can do. There was a performance on a traditional Slovene harp-like instrument, a baton number with 3 Gold Medal Winners from some Central European competition, of course my student that was a finalist in Slovenia's Got Talent (oh yeah, and also the winner of the Euro Championship 3 years ago. When he was 11). Then there were a few song performances, and a group of 1st graders demonstrated traditional Slovene dances. What was the most well received by the Americans? The Slovenes did a play without words, they only said 'blablahblah' and those retirees ATE IT UP. It was sort of cute, but really? A 14 year old just replicated Michael Jackson with perfection. What did the Americans do after the performance? They stood up, linked arms, and sang 'Proud to be An American' together.


ok, just kidding. whew.

All in all, strange day. But I'm havin a blast.
Keep it real,
N

That punk student sure can dance

Word plays.

Ahhh the joys of teaching in your second language. I had my first unfortunate encounter with a student last week. For the most part, the kids are adorable. They come up to me in the hall with these wide eyes and I know that they are contemplating if they should speak to me in English or in Slovene. I've gotten quite a few timid 'Hello's, and a couple of 'How are you?'s. I've also gotten my fair share of 'A bo?' Which literally means 'Will it?'.
'Ja, mislim, da bo'.

One little punk, however, decided to talk back to me. The teacher that I work with left the room during a pretest and the students immediately started talking. I, not wanting to reveal my growing knowledge of Slovene grammar, told the students that I expected them to be quiet during the test. In English. This kid looks right at me, and then repeats, also in English, exactly what I said. Then they continued talking.

After a few seconds of my death stare, I cleared my throat and said again, http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifthis time in Slovene: Students, listen up. It is necessary that everyone is quiet until the tests are finished. Do you understand?

Silence. It was beautiful. Thank you Marta Greenberg for being the best darn lektorica in the world. I will forever cherish that moment in my mind.


You may wonder what happened in the end: I had a conversation in the hall with the student (whom I actually like very much and think is very delightful), told my co-teacher about it, and then heard a little more about this student. Apparently he's famous... I guess Slovenia does have Talent, and I guess KCK is not the only place where I can pick up a few moves.

Another First Day of School…

…Perhaps it could be safely said that was a little bit different than the others*. Not entirely- I had to keep in mind that I am back in an Elementary School (goes through Grade 9 here). However, some differences were slightly more bizarre than others. This was my experience:

8:00 Grades 2-9 go to their homeroom classes. Grade 1 watches the most ridiculous socialism-era-influenced teacher-performance of the first day of school that I have ever seen. I did not really have a place to go, so I wandered around the library and dreamed about the days where I could find Science Fiction/Fantasy books in English.

9:00ish Passing period. The kids, of course, are animals. It’s here, though, that I notice for the first time that students are not wearing shoes. They are wearing house slippers. Why, I ask another teacher? Because it’s healthier. Healthier than the alternative… of going barefoot?

9:15ish Resuming first period. I walk in with my co-teacher, Jana. Everyone immediately stands up when she walks into the room. Every single student looks suspicious, but they are silent and standing in respect. Yes, I will demand this for the rest of my life. But not just in school.

10:00 Snack. I like this in school snack time. I assume that the kiddos have brought granola bars or something. Not quite. The 3 “classroom helpers” for the week go down to the cafeteria to retrieve the snack. What’s on the menu today? Milk, rolls, tea and roasted red peppers. Huh? Oh right, I forgot- nothing helps you focus for the rest of the day like roasted red peppers in olive oil, eating for a snack during my class.

11:00 Dismissal. Where did the kids go? I don’t know, but they went real fast.
PUMPED for day 2.


*An important footnote: I am only including my public education days here in my opinion of “normal first days”. Clearly, I have had some very interesting first days in the KU Cadaver labs, where we begin on Day 1 to skin dean human beings. This is a bit…awkward. For example, a student or two will usually pass out while I try to maintain order and bring in a little sunshine at the same time. I would say that I’ve had many failed first days (Spring 2009 really wasn’t ready for the choreographed dance to “If You Want Blood”, nor the video that you can watch in the 2009 Blog post entitled "First Day of Class... who says I'm not intimidating?"), and also many successes (Spring 2010 ATE UP the cadaver-appropriate rendition of “It’s Rainin’ Men”, performed on the auto-harp).