| Week 3 | |
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I will begin the week three letter today because there is a lot to tell. I suppose if anything good happens during the rest of the week, I can add it later.
I started teaching English to the fishing guides yesterday. In addition to the 18 guides, I had quite an audience. Scott was there and can attest to the fact that it was a whooping! In Portuguese they call it a "whooping de grande". Not that it was so bad…it was just that it was sooooo bad. Some of the guides literally speak NO English and I had to speak in Portuguese for most of the time. It just sucks the life out of me to have to speak for that long in Portuguese. Everybody has said how good my Portuguese but that is little consolation! Today went better with the guides. We are still working on greetings (Hello, my name is ___), etc. I think that it will take a month before all of the guides will have that down pat. They preferred today's lesson, which included some vocabulary for assorted fishing equipment. They knew some of those things because they use them so often. Marcelo, the waiter here, has mastered the phrase, "Excuse me. May I take your plate?" And in only 2 weeks! Way to go, Marcelo. His next big phrase is, "Would you like more tea?" Each week a barge delivers supplies from Manaus to sites up and down the river. As is the Brazilian way…it is taking its sweet time. We are supposed to start school on Monday with the children and we have NO supplies. All of the books and supplies that I sent down are on the barge, black boards…everything is somewhere on some river. I am crossing my fingers, praying, chanting, trying Brazilian voodoo, all in the hopes that my stuff gets here before the children do! Ruth (pronounced Hoochie) met with the "school board" in Barcelos yesterday. We received the paperwork giving our school accreditation. They will send down some chairs, supplies, and all of the textbooks needed for the local curriculum. We will now fall under their jurisdiction and will be subject to inspections and such. As long as they provide us with materials, who cares? One day this week, probably Friday, I will have to go up river to Barcelos and schmooze with the school board people. Because we are located in the "interior" of Brazil, they are somewhat flexible with the school year. The main requirement is that the children attend school 800 hours. The typical school day is only 4 hours and they run a morning and an afternoon session. Well, we are on a tight timeline because we have to correspond with the fishing season. We will begin Monday the 10th of September and go 5 hours a day, six days a week until Good Friday at the end of March. The only days school will be closed will be for two weeks at Christmas. That puts us at exactly 810 hours. That gives us 2 extra days of a bit of flexibility. We are only running 5 hours because I also will teach 2 one-hour adult classes each day. I am somewhat overwhelmed. It is mentally draining to teach when you don't know the language. So I have two choices. Learn Portuguese- fast or suffer for the next 8 months. Thankfully the Portuguese is kind of coming around a bit. There are two staff members here who are certified to teach 1-4. Secondary school here splits into vocational training at around age 13. The two 1-4 teachers are high school educated only, but their classes focused on teaching. Apparently it is difficult find a 1-4 teaching position, and if you do the pay is barely above or even right at the minimum wage. One of the teachers is a guy named Edem (Eddy) who has been working here as a waiter. He will start teaching with me on Monday. There is another girl who works as a housekeeper who will be available to teach if necessary. Scott here: Today we played with the monkeys for a while. One of the monkeys, Chica, who is pregnant and very tame, got loose. After chasing her down, they put a leash on her and we played with her for about an hour. She was pretty cool, but she was kind of in a bad mood because she got caught. She picked any bugs and parasites out of my hair…look at the pictures. On the topic of monkeys, there are 3 baby monkeys who are semi-tame. They aren't in the monkey cage, but they hang around the cage most of the time. You can feed them and they will eat out of your hand, but they are a little too skittish to pick up. Well, Erica's birthday is coming up in a few days and she has decided that she wants a monkey. She said that I could buy 6 more months without her pestering me about having a baby, but only if I catch her a baby monkey in time for her birthday. Since then I've been disguising myself as a banana tree waiting for just the right moment to grab one. I'll let you know in the next letter whether it works or not. On the topic of bananas, there are lots of them here. They grow wild, but Phil also grows them in the garden. After talking to Alan and Wanda Baldridge about their experience in Costa Rica, I was kind of concerned that we wouldn't have any fresh fruits or vegetables. It turns out that is not the case. There is a large garden with all sorts of things I have never seen before and couldn't pronounce even if I knew the name. We have bananas, papaya, and watermelon with almost every meal. There are lots of tomatoes, cabbage, onions, and cucumbers, too. Over all, the food has been very good and not having to cook it has been even better. The maid service has not been too shabby either. Our bed is made daily and clothes are picked up, washed, ironed and delivered. They even iron our underwear! We even have our own towels, lovingly marked, "Professora". How sweet. Bye all, it's almost 8:00 pm and WAY past my bedtime! 09/07/01 Erica again: Well school starts in a few days. Twenty-four desks arrived today and a chalkboard. My little classroom is looking like a classroom. We are still waiting for the barge from Manaus to arrive with supplies. All of the books that I sent down two months ago are supposed to be on that barge (supposed to be). In anticipation of my new and more hectic schedule, I have been weaning myself from my daily nap. Today I only rested for 30 minutes. I didn't actually sleep I read a few chapters of a book. Yesterday's nap lasted for only half an hour. I am worn-out. It is seven o'clock, pitch dark, the crickets and frogs are squeaking out a lovely lullaby, and I am ready for bed! As soon as my dinner is served, I'll eat and head off for bed! (Whew it is a tough life out here!) My English classes with the guides are coming along quite nicely. I wouldn't consider them a whooping anymore. They all wanted to have class tomorrow, Saturday…so I guess they are enjoying it. However on Sunday afternoons they have a pretty serious futębol (pronounced foo-chee-bowl) game, and they were quite relieved to find out that there would not be class on Sundays. Everything is very lovely here and it is very easy to forget that you are in the middle of the jungle. That is a dangerous habit to allow your self to fall into! The other day I was getting some fishing equipment to use as props for my class. I picked up a tackle box and on the back of it was a tarantula no smaller than the size on my hand! It was black with brilliant orange stripes on its legs. When I screamed a list of profanities several people came running. I got Scott to come look at it…it was pretty freaky. I wanted to get my camera and get a picture but the guys who ran to my rescue killed it. When they bashed it with the pole-end of a fishing net, it shriveled up to about the size of a golf ball. It was no longer impressive enough for me to make the hike for my camera. Anyways, snakes and spiders can be and are anywhere and everywhere. So we are being careful. We have also gotten into the habit of pulling back the covers of our bed and checking out the sheets before getting into bed. We had already been checking the sheets, but one of Phil's favorite stories has cemented our resolve for a nightly bed check. There are alligators out in different parts of the river, and they used to go out and catch baby alligators. They would mark their backs with fingernail polish and have alligator races. Well one of Phil's friends was staying with them and was a smart aleck during the races. So as a joke, they put two of the baby alligators in the bed before the man and his went to sleep. His fishing guides still talk about how they had never seen such a beautiful, naked, white woman before. And man she could scream! It's probably a good idea to check our sheets…just in case. |