Blue Monday

The Dutch call today “Blue Monday” because it’s far enough away from Christmas to no longer be exciting, right around now people start giving up on their New Years resolution, and the weather is quite dismal. I shouldn’t laugh that it falls on the same day as Martin Luther King Day. I shouldn’t laugh that it falls on the same day as Martin Luther King Day. I shouldn’t laugh that it falls on the same day as Martin Luther King Day.

This morning started off… well, let’s just say I was riding the struggle bus. I awoke before everyone, who had later starts to their morning. All was well and good as I got ready, packed my lunch and so on. Then came time to go catch the bus. Now, I have a key to the house and can let myself in and out, no problem. But, attached between the house and the garage is a wrought iron gate. Most mornings, I am not the first one to leave, so the gate is unlocked. But this morning I found the deadbolt drawn. Using my key to the back door, I jostled the lock a little with no avail. Glancing at my watch, I feared missing my bus and lost all sense of propriety. I lowered my teacher bag over the gate, stuck my piece of toast into my coat pocket, and proceeded to climb the fence of my own home. I probably looked like the world’s worst burglar, vaulting over the spikes in my teacher pants (this is all before the sun had even come up). Delightful. I did miss my bus, but managed to catch the next one and got to school with plenty of time.

This is my first week of really having an idea what’s going on and being able to work with the kids, so I team taught in T1 and T2 during the morning. We had a fun question and answer session with the classes, where the students could ask me anything about myself and/or American culture, then worked on practicing Present Perfect tenses. I was given a group of advanced learners to work with and their teacher just told me to have them write a story using present perfect, so, I showed them a picture of me feeding a giraffe from a few summers ago and told them to let their imaginations do the rest of the work. The kids got really into it. I don't believe many giraffes gallop wild through the tulip fields of Holland so they thought it was really cool that I got to feed one. 

 Later in the afternoon one of my supervising teachers and I started doing someconcrete lesson planning for the upcoming weeks. Starting next week, I’ll be taking over large portions of class time. I found out that I’ll be reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with the T1 class which I’m really excited about. Naturally, because I’m a fatty who sorely misses her junk food, on my way home from school I went to the supermarket and bought a big Dutch chocolate bar so that I could appropriately read about Charlie’s grand adventures. I’ll be following T2 all day tomorrow so that I can get a better feel for the overarching academic experience. These days it’s almost like I’m a real teacher or something…