I made the 6:30 bus this morning and was able to do a quick check of email. I have not been on Facebook in several days now. It is so frustrating not to be able to get on the internet when it appears I have full service from my neighbor. I keep trying.
We had a chance to get into our classrooms today, but there were workers in mine and no desks or chairs. I went into a neighboring classroom and worked a bit. I think I have the first session sketched out and I just need to flesh it out for each grade level. Then at 12:30 we climbed onto the hot bus (yes, it is air conditioned, but it has limited ability to really keep everyone cool when it is packed) to go to the police department for fingerprinting. We got there a bit before 1:00 p.m. and the women were not through until 3:30 p.m. Men are not supposed to touch women here in public, even on the hand, so they finally put on gloves and quickly ushered us through the process. However, we had to wait a long time (obviously) before they came to that solution.
Meanwhile, many of the men had on shorts (in fact, most of them did) and they wouldn’t fingerprint them if they didn’t have on long pants, so the 4 men who wore long pants traded on the bus with those who had shorts until they eventually got all the men fingerprinted. (They were finished by about 2:30.) I find all these taboos and traditions rather fascinating.
After we got home I decided to look through my veggies. I had bought some romaine lettuce and some carrots. There were 3 heads of romaine shoved into a Styrofoam container and taped with packing tape strips. Interesting. It was quite wilty and rather wormy, so from the 3 heads I got enough for one big salad (more than I can eat in one sitting). Tomorrow we have a potluck pool party and so I may bring salad.
I have been having trouble falling asleep for the past few nights, as my mind races once I get in bed and close my eyes. I’m going to try to get there a little earlier tonight as we have to be on the bus by 5:45 a.m. tomorrow for medical tests. We are all hoping that we can get through this more easily than we did the fingerprinting and be able to get back into our classrooms.
I have a fair amount of furniture moving and cleaning up to do before my room will feel ready. It’s weird not to be preparing for my one class, but instead for the multitudes. Yesterday my room had a bare cement floor and today it was covered in a sort of wine colored carpet and smelled strongly of glue. Here’s to all the new experiences!!
allaboardforadventure 