Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Disclaimer: This post is more about the people, everyday life, culture, etc. of Kosova, since really not a lot has been happening here the last week. Like the title says, I think I'm finally starting to understand what this place is all about (even though there is so much more for me to learn)...
So I realize it’s been almost a week since I’ve typed my last post, but ya know what—I’m doing A LOT better blogging than when I was in Guatemala. That’s probably because I could skype much more often with people. Once again, I’m 7 hours ahead of Wisconsin, so it’s kind of hard… and I STILL don’t have my internet hooked up—more on that later on. So here’s the last 6 day’s recap:
Last weekend was pretty low-key. Friday night all of us teachers hit up the bar scene. Nothing too crazy. I did drink a little too much of this brandy shot. It looked clear, but it totally tasted like tequila. It’s rude in any culture to turn down a shot, so obviously I took it. But then they bought me another one. And another one. I didn’t really drink a lot of beer, but it was mainly the shots that ruined my night. I felt like crap so I just went home to bed at the end of the night. But not before we did some dancing. We found a place with a live band, and they were taking requests, so we kept requesting awesome American songs. I didn’t do much on Saturday, nor Sunday. I was planning on going to this 9/11 benefit concert that the Prishtina Orchestra was having, hosted by the US Embassy. But I started to feel kind of sick on Sunday afternoon. I went in to school at about 6 pm, mainly to watch some NFL football on my computer, but I also did some work. I found a bar/restaurant that had the Pittsburg/Baltimore game on, so I watched that until it was over, then went home. I went to bed early, around 10:30 pm, because, like I said, I was feeling kind of sick. I woke up Monday morning and my throat and nose were killing me. Apparently whatever I have a few other teachers have. I’ve been taking Sudafed and Nyquil, and that seems to help momentarily. But I’m still feeling kind of crappy today. I’m sure I’ll get over it soon. I’m just glad it’s not my tummy/guts that are sick, cuz I probably wouldn’t be able to go to school then.
Oh, and I was contemplating on getting up at 2:30 am to watch the Packer/Saints game, but I was just too darn tired. Plus, I told myself when I came here that I was going to have to give up some things in my life that I didn’t want to give up, and watching football on a normal schedule was one of them. Normally, on Sunday’s, if the Packer’s play at noon in Green Bay, I can watch it (either at a bar or online) at 7 pm here, so that’s not bad at all. Today I woke up at 6:15 am and the Raiders/Broncos Monday Night game was still on—it was only in the 3rd quarter. So weird!
Since last week was the first week of school, everyone was very busy. It was the first week of school, so there wasn’t a lot of free time to do stuff. I’ve been saying a lot that my school is a lot like my school in Guatemala (Interamericano), but let me tell you why it’s very similar to it. First of all, the curriculum at ASK is pretty “relaxed.” Basically, you teach what you want to teach. This can be good and bad at the same time. Sometimes it’s nice to not have restrictions or boundaries on what you teach. But on the other hand, sometimes you want some structure to follow, something to guide you along the way. They gave me this Ontario curriculum map to kind of follow, which was an absolute joke. I just tossed it aside (for the most part) and I’m teaching roughly the same standards as I taught last year, the California state standards. Here’s why I threw it out: it told me to teach WORLD HISTORY from the beginning of mankind (Neanderthals, homo sapiens, etc.) until present day. Are you kidding me? That means I’d have to spend like 1 week on EVERYTHING. WWII in 1 week? Ha! I could teach WWII for an entire semester if I was allowed to. WWII usually takes me about 3-4 weeks. Anyway, I don’t like the standards so I’m just going to do what I think is best for the kids. There are 2 ways of teaching: going in depth on a few topics, or broadly covering a lot of topics. I’m obviously going with the former.
Also, if you want something done to your room, or need something fixed, it takes FOREVER! Once again, mirror image of Guatemala. I’ve just learned to do things myself. However, some things you can’t do yourself, like fix my washer or find a new apartment to live in. I have asked 3 times to get a huge map hung on my brick wall in my room; still no response. Speaking of my apartment… good news tonight! One of the returning teachers, Scott, is moving as soon as possible, and I checked out his apartment, and I want it. It’s very close to school (10 minutes), it has a microwave : - ), and it’s located near a lot of other teacher’s apartments. Plus the washer actually works! Those are the things I’m looking for. Scott said maybe in the next few days he’ll be moved out, so once he’s moved out, I can move in. Yay! As I write this, I’m doing my laundry at Natalie’s, hopefully for the last time. No offense against Natalie at all, cuz she’s been very helpful with my current situation. But it’ll be nice not to have to go somewhere else to do my laundry. I’ll buy Natalie dinner and a bottle of detergent or something like that for her help.
Let me tell you a little bit about the school I teach at. Our school has 2 locations. One is up on a big hill on the east side of town—that’s known as the “Ed Center” and it consists of kindergarten through 3rd grade (I think). Then there’s the main school, in downtown Prishtina, that’s 4th through 12th grade. Most of the grades in K-9th only have about 2 sections per grade, so only about 30-50 students per grade. But then, for some reason, our school gets a ton of students in grades 10 through 12. So each of those grades has about 80 students. There is a limit of 25 kids per class, which is ok, but still more than I would like, considering most of these kids have problems with their English. Well, on the first day of school, I had 37 students in one of my classes, and my other 3 classes only had between 8 and 12. Finally, over a week into school, I think we’re pretty close to evening out each class. I have roughly 20 kids per class, which is just fine with me.
My classroom is about average size. I’ll get pictures up on facebook soon, once I fully decorate it. Like I said, I’m still waiting on a big map to get up. Plus, the school promised up projectors, but no one seems to know where they are. They ordered them from a different country, and the company says they sent them out like 2 weeks ago, but no one knows where they are. That’s a problem that needs to be addressed immediately, in my opinion. Anyway, soon I should have a projector, which will make my life 53 times easier. I hate using chalk on the board or reading everyday out of the book. Without visuals, there’s only so much you can do in History class. I like visual aids, and I’m pretty sure 10th graders do too, so those projectors can’t come soon enough.
But anyway, my biggest class is about 24, and my smallest class is about 16. For some reason they also have me teaching Marketing this year, which really blows, cuz I don’t know anything about Marketing. I told them this, but they told me just to do whatever I can with it. So I apologize in advance to all of my Marketing students. I’ve just been going with the book so far, which I know is the wrong way to do things, but that’s what happens when you give me a class that I’m not qualified to teach (Marketing is in the business field, not Social Studies field) or a class that I have ZERO passion for. It’s been ok so far though. The kids seem to think that I know what I’m talking about, so that’s all that matters. I have mostly juniors and seniors in that class, so it’s a little more rowdy than my other classes, but not too bad. All of my other 4 classes are World History, for 10th graders. So far they’ve been wonderful! I hate to say this, but I think these kids might be more well behaved than my Guatemala kids. But we’ll see… there’s still a lot of time left in the school year.
My classroom can get really REALLY hot though, too. There are no windows in it, which is good and bad. There is no airflow in there. So in the wintertime I guess it gets SUPER cold, but I’m ok with that, since I sweat my balls off when I teach anyway. Seriously, I’ve gone through so many shirts in the past week. Today I ran out of white under shirts, so I had to wear just a button-up shirt. Fortunately it wasn’t too hot in my room today. Well, it was hot, but not unbearable. Recently it’s been in the 90’s here. WAY hotter than I want it to be. Especially since nothing has air-conditioning. I can’t wait for it to cool down. The mornings are wonderful. Usually when I walk to school is my favorite part of the day. You’d think it’d be when I’m walking home, since I have nothing else to do, but it’s not because after I walk home, with my backpack on, I am a complete sweaty mess. I usually come home and find my apartment sizzling, somewhere in the 80s. Today when I came home it was 86’ in there, but it said it was 98’ outside. Aye Chihuahua! Anyway, my walks to school are the best. There is no one walking on the streets in the morning. This culture seems to be a bunch of late risers. When I come home from school there are hundreds of people and cars around, but hardly any in the morning. Even on weeknights, if you are on the streets walking around at like 10 or 11 pm, you will be amazed many people are out and about, having dinner, a coffee, walking around in their small groups, or just hanging out on park benches. It’s something I’m not used to.
Finally, the last part about my school I need to tell you about is lunch. We have 2 lunch periods, each being about 45 minutes each. Usually I just go to a restaurant nearby and get a meal for about 5 euro (roughly $7). I need to start bringing my own lunch, since I’m going out to eat way too much. The reason I go there is mainly for the free Wi-Fi. But our school lunch room is actually a club. Not just any club, but pretty much the nicest, most exclusive club in the entire city. It’s called Duplex, and our school rents it out to some people every night. All around this club/lunch room, you see advertisements for liquor and beer, and the bar is even set up there during school (they just cover it up with white sheets). We all say we’re going to go there someday, but I don’t think I want to, since I’ve heard they let our students in there, and that would just not be fun to run into my students at a place like that. I see my students often walking around town enough—I don’t need to see them when they’re drunk.
One more thing I have to add about the culture here that I’ve noticed. The whole issue of “space” is completely different here. Sometimes I’ll be at a store and people will literally be touching my arm with their arm while standing in line (they do form lines here, so that’s better than Guatemala at least…). And because of the water issues, which I’ve previously discussed, not a lot of people here shower on a regular basis. Somedays, my classroom can just STINK of B.O. (body oder). It’s horrible. As you walk on the streets, and you pass people, you can definitely tell who showers and who doesn’t. There are a handful of homeless people here as well. Just today I passed a guy that I pass everyday, in the same spot. Except today, for some odd reason, he was burning a big pile of cardboard right on the sidewalk. Very strange, considering it wasn’t really cold at all, and it was 7 am.
The unemployment rate here is somewhere in the 40-45% I’ve been told. It’s terrible. No one has jobs. I don’t know how these people survive. Basically, if you have an education, you can find a job, but most people are uneducated, so they walk around selling cigarettes a restaurants, wash your windows while at a stoplight, set up a small table on the sidewalk and try to sell odds and ends, or just plain sit there on the sidewalk looking as poor as they can and beg for money. Apparently it’s illegal here to give kids money, since most of the time they are told to do this by adults, and the adults just collect the money and don’t give the kids anything. Sometimes we’ll be eating at a restaurant and some little kids will come up to us, hugging us, kissing us on the cheeks, and begging us for money. We’ve been told just to ignore then, and it’s hard to do, but if it’s illegal to give money to beggars, you have to ignore them.
The people here are very young too. The average age is much lower than most in the world. Most of the people you see here are kids of the people that moved away during the war in the 1990s. A lot of parents stayed in Albania, Macedonia, etc, and their kids came back. So it’s pretty cool to constantly be around people my age. I might add, the women aren’t too bad to look at either… ; - )
This weekend I’m arranging a school van to take a small group of us to a city in the south called Prizren. I don’t know much about it, but apparently it’s one of the nicer cities in this country. Very historic, and they have a lot of Islamic mosques, so we’re just going for the day on Saturday. Should be a blast (as long as we don’t step on any landmines… jajajajajaja!)! I’ll probably write again in another week. Oh, my internet… the guy was supposed to come Saturday morning, but I was just too tired I guess, so I never heard him come at 9 am. I went back and set up another appoint for this Friday, but now if I’m planning on moving in the next few days, I might have to wait another week to get my internet installed, since I won’t be in the same place. Things are getting better everyday though. And even though I might talk bad about this place, it’s been a great experience so far. Without my fellow teachers, I’d probably go crazy. But I have a feeling that is what all international schools are like. This is my 2nd one, and so far that’s been the trend, so we’ll see… bye bye bye everyone!
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