WHAT A WEEK!

What a busy busy week this has been! I am teaching full time now, which means I am teaching Afrikaans (well leading the class with worksheets at least since I can't speak the language), sciene, book education, EMS, maths and swim. By the end of the day my desk is completely covered with papers to grade, hand back, copy, etc... Yet despite all the chaos, I still love it. I love the humor of the students. Here is a priceless quote I received on Monday:
student: "Miss Heil, why do they call them roofies?"
me: "Pardon?"
student: "I think they should be called floories because you are more likely to end up on the floor than on the roof."
me: "Are you quoting The Hangover right now because I do not think that movie is appropiate for 6th grader."

The students also keep me on my toes. Since I am new to South Africa, I do not know what the students have learned in previous grades. It is not like the US where the teachers have an outline on what all they must teach. On Monday, I got observed teaching fractions. My teacher told me to start with the basics for a refresher. Well, I am glad that I made sure to have plenty of things to do in my lesson extender because when I gave a worksheet on matching a fraction with a picture (which I planned for lasting 25 minutes with a discussion), the students told me it was super easy and finished it in 5 minutes tops!

Some of my students have started a list of South African words that I don't know so that when I hear them I understand. Some of the new words they added to the list this week:

kyf means stole "Miss Heil, someone kyfed my pencil"
yebo means hello in Xhosa
skwif means skew "Don't skwif the story"
ayoba means cool

This weekend the other COST students and myself have decided to just chill in Grahamstown. Next week, we have half term from Wednesday to Monday so we only have to go to the school on Monday and Tuesday. I am going on camp with grade 6 to the African Imprint so I basically have the whole week off. Thursday we are leaving to go to Port Elizabeth for 4 days. While we are there we are going to watch a soccer game at the new Nelson Mandela Bay stadium built for the World Cup. We are also going to watch a rugby game. I have been told that people "tailgate" here too. They don't call it tailgating though.

Cheers!