My first day of school

I know I've been writing on this blog all the time-- I hope you don't mind! It's a really good way for me to process my thoughts. Today was the first day of teaching. Our driver picked us up outside our apartment at 7:30 a.m. and he took us to the new campus of 50,000 students. We were shown our office on the 5th floor which consists of 9 desks. We share the office with a Filipino and Japanese teacher.

My first class was at 10 a.m. and it lasted until noon! The classroom was packed with 50 students and I had to practically shout. The halls were so noisy as well as the wide open windows. The temperature was 100 today. I was so sweaty. That class of freshmen English was okay. We covered quite a bit of material and I was able to give them English names. I also discussed my family and showed them some pictures. They think my sister is beautiful and would love to meet her!

After that class, we ran over to the crowded teacher's cafeteria. There were only a few options on the menu. Today I ended up with ox tail and quail eggs! Oh, goodness, I hope the food improves. Last night we went to a banquet where the food was quite exotic, but very good.

We finished our meager meals and then went back to our "office," where we worked more on lesson plans. At 2:30 I went to my other freshmen English class. This class also had 50 people and they were much more energetic. I think I'll really like them. Some of them already had really random English names like Bird, T-Mac, Lemon, and Smile. Pretty humorous!

So now it is about 5:30 p.m. and we just returned from the new campus. We'll get some dinner and then our team will meet. After that I suppose it's time to go to bed again! It was such a long, but good day. It is hard to adjust to all the thousands of students staring at me or everyone taking pictures of me, even in class. That will be a new class rule-- no taking pictures of the teacher while she is wiping the sweat from her face, writing on the board, or looking out the window! The father sure gave me a lot of stamina today, especially since I only ate some quail eggs for lunch. He is so good!