It has been an especially dull week in the land of St. Laurent Du Maroni -and trust me, to be especially dull takes some doing... As such we shall have to turn to the children of my numerous classes to provide the entertainment for this blog-post. For some bizarre reason, the three CM2 (year 6) classes I teach on a tuesday morning were all on top banterous form. I'm hoping some of these quotes don't end up being "had to be there" moments... that would be awkward!
The first classic came when I was asking the children if they had any interesting pets at home (other than the 8 dogs and 3 cats- apparently normal for a guyanese household). The quotes are obviously all translated. If they could speak English this well by age 10 I wouldn't need to be assisting them! Teacher: Jean-Claude, you have a parrot, don't you? Child: No. Teacher: Yes, you do, I'm sure you do. Child: Yes, but he's dead. Teacher: (laughing)... Ha, I know its not funny, but still... Child: Miss, it's not funny. What can I say! He drank some hot water and he died! Cue awkward silence in the class.
Who knew a bit of agua caliente could pose such problems to our parrot friends! Shortly after, another girl explained that she did have a dog but not anymore. I didn't want to get into any more dead parrot situations but still, I had to ask: "did he die?" "No miss, he left." "Why did he leave?" "How should I know miss, he's a dog, he's got to live his life, you know?" Fair enough. Sounds like my kind of dog.
I was then given the interesting task of having to explain the words for chicken both female and male. Chicken was easy. They knew that one. Hen I could explain. And then we came to the male one or, the boy chicken as I referred to it as I forgot the french word for male. Hint: its male. One particularly loud boy in the front row, who I have often seen at the bar in the local discotheque (he is 10!), shouted out "Chickenmon" jamaica style. "Er, no, sadly its not chickenman" I explained, although I kind of wished it was as it would save me the embarassment of having to explain the word Cock. The worst part about this, is that, as they don't speak English, this word means nothing to them, apart from male chicken after today. But for some reason, it made me feel really sheepish as if I was teaching them a bad word. Sometimes I think the kids have a higher mental age than me. Particularly when they correct my french grammar. "Me: are you happy?vous etes heureuse?.... Child: Er, madame, it's actually heureux" Well, you know what? You don't see me correcting every single word of English you speak which is wrong, do you! I just smile and pretend I understand. (BAD TEACHER).I did get to teach them another cheeky word later on in the class: FART Because, quite frankly the smell was too bad to ignore. Lets hope they don't tell the teacher.
When asking a simple question to a 9-year old, you can never expect a simple answer. When you pick them to answer a question, they have the floor and they want it for as long as possible. So.. How many dogs do you have? Clearly, I require an answer such as 2, or in the case of this crazy country, probably 9 or so. Even the teacher has 7! What I will get however, is the life story of each dog, living or dead, the dreams, fears and future career plans for each animal. This is great, sometimes, when I have been too busy napping on a sunday (often) to fill a full 45 minutes with my lesson plan. However, when I actually want to move onto another subject than animals (which we have been doing for 3 weeks now), its not ideal. Thank god for the kid with the big glasses and the mullet who sits in the front of my third class. When I asked Toya (tres chatty) how many dogs she has.. .she replied... 7, but
nowitsonly6becauseoneranawayandtheotheronedidthistheotherday.... blah blah, He tapped her gently on the shoulder and explained: "er, Toya, If i'm not mistaken, I think she was asking you for the exact number of dogs, not their life story, thanks." LEGEND.
I'm well aware that these various musings on children and domestic animals may be completely boring and pas de tout funny and maybe its just me chuckling away, but to be honest, I am a little worried for my sanity. The most adult conversation I have had this week was with the 12-year old who has been stuck in year 5 for three years now. Oh, and the weird guy at the park, who came and sat leaning against me on a park bench (er, inappropriate) and proceeded to tell me how beautiful I was, how much he liked my style and that he wanted to be with me, and oh, maybe I could help him find a job as well. I had a snotty nose, greasy hair, I was practically wearing pajamas- as I do most days these days- and thought that putting my headphones in, and writing in a notebook facing away from him would give off the "I'm not interested" signal. When that failed, I asked him politely to let me do some work. He was STILL not detered. in fact, he asked me if I was scared of him. Great chat-up line! "Ok madam. I will sit right here, on the other bench and wait for you to be finished and then we can talk." He waited over 45 mins where I did not so much as glance at him. Needless to say, when I finished I got on the bike and biked quickly and in a weird way so he couldn't follow. Not cool.
I suppose i'm just getting a bit frustrated being stuck in this town. The first week after Miami was ok because I needed some downtime, but now we are three weeks into the term, and I have not been inside a single moving vehicle, meaning the whole time has been spent in the same 1km2 of the town centre. Oh, and my 2 far away schools which I have to bike to, but even then it was raining and biking in the rain gave me a cold this weekend. Not ideal. If I have a problem like this home (which, to be honest) I wouldn't have, I would call some friends and DO something. 2 problems... don't wanna sound like a Billy, but to be honest I can't really say, aside from other assistants who mostly live 3 hours away, I haven't really made any friends. 2nd problem: Even if I had, there is NOTHING to do. Thank god for Skype and Utorrent. You know its sad when you go to an all-day choir rehearsal and one of the teachers of your classes takes you and explains that, she's not feeling great as she went to bed at half 5 after a carnaval party. She is 35. I am 21. My friday night was spent doing 100 lengths at the swimming pool, making a jacket potato, downloading a gossip girl and getting to bed by 10 because I had to be up at half 8. What is that about?!?! I can't even rely on yummy food to get me through as none is available. I was watching the comic relief bake-off thing today (a program I would NEVER watch at home) and was actually salivating at a victoria sponge!
Bring on the Caribbean... 13 days of teaching and 3 weekends to go! Ha.. I guess my life is not such a sob story after all.
Peace out,
Polly xxx
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