Wednesday, April 20

As I am sitting here writing this post, there is a house alarm going off somewhere nearby. It's been going off for about 15 minutes now and is about to "drive me mad" as an Irish person might say. I don't understand the point of a house alarm if police don't come when it goes off. Oh my goodness, this blog must have magical powers, because just as I was typing that last sentence it finally turned off. Hallelujah!

I haven't written about the past several school days, so I have quite the collection of random facts and stories. This post won't have much organization to it.

I am so surprised at how difficult it can be for me to teach here. The school seems to teach things so much different. Here are some examples:

- I was in 5th class last week and am again this week and they have been doing calculations of percentages. This requires some long division, which is impossible for me because they do their long division completely different. The sign is on the bottom and I haven't quite figured out how it works. Hayley was asking me to help her with her homework the other day and I started doing long division my way only to look up at her with the most confused look on her face. Oh my..
-I won't even mention Irish. I clearly can't help with that!
-Today I was asked to help some struggling students comprehend some pages in their workbook. Sounds easy enough, but when the content is about Normans arriving to Ireland and invading in the 11th century, things get a bit confusing. I had to reread it multiple times to grasp who was who. It mentioned cities and people I had never heard of. It was good for me to understand how the kids were feeling!
-A girl asked me what 100 divided by 4 was today. Since I can't help with long division I started to tell her to try and think about it in terms of money. I asked her what 4 coins make up a dollar. After I got about halfway through that sentence I realized she wasn't going to understand things in dollars and quarters. They don't have a 25 cent coin either, so I couldn't even explain it in Euros.
-They use the metric system here, lucky them. Unfortunately though, I'm not 100% comfortable or quick at converting grams into milligram into kilograms, etc. I was supposed to be walking around helping "correct" their papers, but it was taking me forever, so Miss Caulwell and the class ended up giving me a little lesson on the metric system.

Some other random things:
-The way they eat lunch in the schools is so interesting. They have 2 breaks in the day, one is 15 minutes and the other 30 minutes. They take out one piece of lunch for the first break. They take the food out in the classroom and eat it as they are walking down the "corridors" to go outside in the "yard." It's like lunch/recess. It's so weird to see them eating as they leave the classroom and in the halls. They aren't allowed to have any snack food except on Fridays in which they are only allowed to have one piece of junk food.
-There are zero snakes here. When I told them my college roommate had a snake they had almost the exact reaction I had when I saw the snake eat a mouse for the first time. Some of the kids have never even seen a snake. Wouldn't that be nice?!
-There are no pencil sharpeners in the whole school. They have to use the little handheld ones.
-They often say "thanks a mill!" for "thanks a million."
-The kids actually have quite a bit of homework here. Miss Caulwell forgot to put the homework on the dry erase board last week, which meant they didn't have to do any. They were SCREAMING because they were so excited. It was hysterical. I think they have so much homework because they are only at school from about 8:50-2:15 per day. There's not enough time to get everything done!
-I was wrong about the word "craic." It actually means to have a good time with people. You often hear people or see things that say, "The craic was mighty."
-They say "eejits" instead of "idiots"
-Fridays in the school start with assembly. The pastor from the Kill-O'-the-Grange church comes to give a small sermon and then we sing songs. Most of them are very close to kids' worship songs in America, but a lot of them have different melodies or rhythms. It makes it difficult because I know the song my way and I want to sing it so bad, but they are singing it differently!
-999 is the emergency number here.
-Breaks are called "holidays."
-"Quotation marks" are called "inverted commas"
-Teachers often say "that's deadly!" about assignments students have done well on.
-I've heard people say, "Did I give you a fright?" often. I like the way that's phrased:)
-"That's a novel idea!" is another phrase I've heard a few times. While it often sounds to me like they are saying "That's an awful idea," it actually means something completely different.
-They put a dot over a number that is repeated instead of a line.
-The stereotype that Irish people drink a lot of tea is soooo true. People drink it all day long! They drink it at the first break of the day, the second break of the day during lunch, when they come home, after dinner, while they're watching TV, before they go to bed, etc. I asked Diane to count up how many cups she has a day and she says she averages about 9.

This was so funny. Yesterday the kids learned about people trying to cross a creek in Australia hundreds of years ago. They didn't know what a creek was! She asked them and one of their responses was "a squeaky sound in a door." There were some other really off-the-wall answers as well. I thought that was so funny!

I'm beginning to worry a bit about how I'm going to get home to America in 5 weeks. This volcano business seems to be pretty serious. There are absolutely no flights going to or from anywhere near here. They've actually said we may be seeing some ash here in the next few days. While I think that would be cool to see, I also think it would be cool to go home when I'm supposed to. The secretary at my school has a daughter who is a pilot, and she supposedly said that if it erupts more, or if the other one erupts (the true facts got lost in translation a bit, oh the accents), she has been told it could be 6 years until they get things cleared up. While that's obviously quite extreme and I don't think that will happen, I still am aware and have been told that flights still may not be going up 5 weeks from now. Apparently there is a boat that leaves from Western England. Of course I wouldn't be able to fly to England to get to that boat. I would have to take a boat there, then get the boat from Western England. I've heard it takes 6 days to get to New York. Then of course I'd have to arrange a way home from there. I'm praying the volcano will just stop instead.