Firstly the Day started badly with the bus being late and I got into school 5 minutes after classes start and I have the multimedia to set up and then allow time for Microsoft Vista to allow me to do anything. (Microsoft have made some decent attempts at operating systems over the years and this is the first time I have bought the top of the range OS available Vista Ultimate - but never again - this OS is slow unstable and frustrates me every time I go to do something). When I head home for Xmas this will be formatted and unsecure XP Pro put back on because its faster, more stable and actually allows you to use the computer in the way it was designed to be used, switch on start up and work... not wait 15 minutes till Vista decides if it will let you.)
But then the day got better mainly because I had 4 free periods together - have I mentioned I love Day 4 of the schedule... The final class of the day started poorly pupils are high after lunch and I took some drastic action by sending a boy from the room (Yes I felt guilty) but he thought it was acceptable to throw something across the room when he thought I wasn't looking, needless to say his ass went out the door pretty fast followed very quickly by me, it showed the rest of the class I hope that I wasn't going to accept that level of boisterousness in my class after a short and constructive discussion and convinced he was feeling contrite i let him back in and from that point on the kids were angels. - this was the first occassion I have had any reason to be annoyed at a pupils behaviour to the point of sending them out. It will be interesting to see if the lesson was learned.
Tonight was open night for parents and was well supported, for me this entailed listening to one and a half hours of speeches exploring the success of the school last year in spanish (though the technology department did get a nice mention and our photo's taken earlier in the day were shown on a 6 ft screen to the assembled parents, much to Diana's shock when she eventually noticed - too busy chatting)
Then we went to our mentor rooms where my colleague Hernando spent a further hour informing the parents of our mentor group all about the school rules this year (again all in spanish) I have come to the conclusion this is definitly a spanish speaking country as everyone apart from me seems to speak it - this isnt true of course I can speak spanish just not very well and if it involves stringing 2 or more words together I probably sound like I am from asia speaking pigeon english. That said I met some lovely parents and I can't really fault their kids, even the boy who threw the paper ball across the room would have been excused if he had been fast enough to tell me he was exploring the aero dynamics of a paper ball in flight - shame he didn't.
I could go into a whole speel about Salaries (We got paid today) but I wont mainly because I think everyone is feeling a bit rattled by the fact the school took the 7 Million they gave us when we arrived straight back out the first salary payment leaving some with the equivalent of £100 to live on for the coming month definitly a bit heavy handed.
Eventually around 1940 we finished and Diana's other half Dan managed to negotiate his way to the school in Diana's brand new shiny jeep and picked us up, now I felt he was doing a great job just negotiating the traffic - to drive here takes a certain type of lunacy. But not only did he have to avoid the traffic he had to avoid Diana's sharp comments about accelerating into spaces that didn't exist for more than the briefest of seconds or her gentle reminder to stop at stop signs though by the time she reminded Dan we were over half way through it. Overall it was just the sort of adrenalin kick I needed after 3 hours of trying to understand every 34th word I was hearing. Tomorrow should be another day of meetings I am just hopeful they don't take as long as the last two wednesdays and I get some time for a department meeting with Miss Sarmiento. (Must find access to a coffee pot)
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