Little thoughts

The outlaws are here at the moment, tidying up the flat and throwing out the lodger. After a few days away back in the motherland to muster reinforcements (well an operations on the ganglions in his wrist - there is a joke there about too many 'heil Hitlers'....but I'm above that, oh yes.) he returned to take water and eggs again. Fortunately he has managed to take his finger from his arse and he's found a flat that he moves in to in a few weeks. In between that time, he is moving to his sister's flat. So, good news all round and we'll finally have the place to ourselves.

As I suspected, Friday evening was DIY night. The builders finished putting in new radiators but neglected to fill in the holes in the wall - and there was me thinking Polish builders were diligent. Anyway, Grzegosz, started hammering the concrete away and then smooting it down sparks flying a little too close to the gas cooker for my liking. Well it's different to an evening in the pub.

So this saturday morning I have been relegated to the bedroom/study with the laptop whilst K and Ewa tackle the living room - packing up Patrycia's belongings etc. So i get a get-out-cleaning pass for the whole day! Not so much to celebrate though - I'm going to be tied to the laptop with work related stuff!

Two students were expelled from school this week but it happened in quite an interesting way. They were guilty of beating up two younger children, one in school and one outside during the weekend. The vice-director of the school came in to the staff-room and explained the story and put a motion forward for expelling the two students permenantly. Every teacher had a chance to comment and put views forward and then we took a vote on it.

The teaching at Bell is going fine, but I'm finding that most of my days are spent doing lesson plans. Hopefully it will change when we decide on the course books at Program Bell. It just means that i've got to trawel through 000s of books and make loads of photocopies. Another problem is that a few of my classes are very small so group work kind of goes out of the window. There is also, shock horror, a reluctance to do homework tasks. As with all organisations, the person who is paid the least is often one of the most important and at Bell it's no different: Magda the administrator is the one that makes it all work - the little bits that allow it all to function: photocopy codes, keys, e-mailing class details.

I have some lessons at the music school as well these are the ones I enjoy the most. Lessons at the technical high school are a bit of a testosterone fest where 90% of my students are
teenage boys interested in football, smoking, drinking, computers and girls. So the relative calm of an all-female class is a lovely antidote; really friendly and hard working too, all with a good sense of humour.