What a peaceful and restful and productive week this was, no onerous duty, no surprise landings by aliens, in fact there were only four blows of note on the gong of life.
In the first gong, whose echo sounded brazenly, we administered the loot from bilingual week to the students, the administration came up to our small office (principal, vice, discipline master, chaplain) and each said a dozen or so words in English and then we coordinators called the names and told what the prizes we for and the administration handed them out. The prizes were crayons (called colors), erasers, pencils, notebooks, scissors, and pencil sharpeners. Following this we had a feast which Oliver's wife had made of fish, fuleri juice, and plantains. We was a very pleasant affair.
The second gong, which thudded bodily, was on Valentine's day. A day where things happen here in a rather subdued manner. I began each class by drawing an enormous heart on the board and dozens of small ones. I then game a short lecture on sending, always a good verb, valentines (thanks again for the Tree ma). I then brought out a piece of paper and gestured for the students to imitate me. I folded it in half and tore the folded side along the lines of an exaggerated question mark. Ooo the students were delighted to see that I suddenly held a heart in my hand, and incidentally all their hearts in hand as well. How delighted they were, insisting that they could not figure it out and I simply must do it for them. But I simply
Put on my long-suffering look and began a slow glasses polish that jumpstarted their brains. I then had them all write out "roses are red / violence are blue / sugar is sweet / and so are you" and told them to give it to their mothers. I then began to start on the lesson, but could get nowhere for every time I turned around one would yell for me to look and he or she would show me a valentine fresh-formed. Some students had near a dozen at the end, and then by Thursday they had the audacity to tell me they had run out of room in their notebooks! That evening I delivered my own valentines. Mommie Shah got a bottle of Djino (a very sweet tropical fruit drink that people like) and so did Alfred's wife. Then I got cooking. The other day one of the three recently arrived Canadians mentioned a hankering for reeses. I tucked the knowledge away and then went out on Tuesday to purchase a small thing of Tartina (like nutella but without the hazelnut) and some scoops of ground peanuts. I then melted the tartina in the sun, which is now blazing merrily, and poured it over the mounds of peanut and pricked it with a toothpick and set it in the freezer. Wait wait wait. I delivered the platter and ended the giving of valentines.
The third gong sunk into the spirits of all woodenly. My mom sent me some stickers and I graded the student homework with them and suddenly had students throwing homework in my hands at the end of class that they had "forgotten" to give me the day before. Yeah right, they just wanted stickers! And to do what with? Well to feminize the male of course, for it is apparently great fun to stick them on the ears and adopt a Runway Strut. I also, during coffee, rather impishly stuck one on the hand of the vice-principal next to whom I sit. He sort of looked stunned and the administrators at the table were nonplussed while he asked me why I had done it. I said that it was because he was good homework, a comment which got the table laughing. Then he asked why I had chosen pink to give him. Well I had not chosen the color for it was simply the next in the row of stickers, but since he was wearing an elegant pink tie I told him that I wanted him to match. Well, that afternoon, while sitting on Alfred's porch-he is convalescing from a flare-up of his old injury-the vice came to visit as well and proudly showed me his hand which was still adorned with the sticker.
The fourth gong sounds hollowly. I came into class pouring forth energy, brilliant lesson in hand and was met, not with the accustomed cheer of thirty voices, but with thirty hollow eyes. That is right, I am not miswriting (though given the atrocity of the spelling on this blog I can forgive you for thinking that). I only had fifteen students. The school the afternoon before had driven everyone out who has not paid. And thus in my other classes I had nine and twelve. It was, sad to say, amazing. We were productively to a scary early-Fordian manner. The students labored along the assembly line of knowledge and as a class produced brilliant vehicles. And by vehicles I mean conversation vehicles. And by brilliant I mean that the sentences had subjects and matching verbs in a tense that made sense.
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