DAY 1
Tuesday 6th June 2007

It’s quite possible that I was a bit nervous after all before my first day at school at the Puerto galera High School.
The day before I had moved in with my good friends Willy and Jocelyn, who live close to the school and in many ways have a great number of connections to the school.
I slept like a baby the night before, quite exhausted after the trip from Cebu.

I had no problems with the plane, the taxi, the ferry or the tricycle.
Well, I must admit I went a bit too far with the tricycle and had to walk a few hundred meters, and in these parts of the world a thing like that has a price: lots and lots of sweat.
After breakfast Willy and Jocelyn took me to the school where I had a heartly welcome by the principal Mrs. Tutanes.
But all the members of the staff at the school were exremely kind to me.

As  a matter of fact I had no idea what was going to happen, but they had already made a plan.
4th year from 10 am to 11 am and 1st year from 1 pm to 2 pm. Those groups are at the age of 15-16 years and 11 to 12 years of age
I was escorted into the class room where a teacher introduced me to the students.
Then she left and I was all alone there facing no fewer than 59 students!
First of all I introduced myself. I told them about Europe, Denmark and my own school.
Then the students had to do the same: Me, Asia, The Philippines and my school.
When the lesson was over they were more or less finished and I left the class room carrying 59 pages with a lot of writing.

One has to be careful here.
If the students get an assignment you yourself end up with 59 pages to correct in front of you.
Thats a lot of work, I can tell you.
Some of the papers had a lot of interesting and useful information, which I can use in the future work with the students.

All in all the lesson was satisfactory and I must admit that I have experienced classes in Denmark with much fewer students, where the level of  noise was much higher.  

After this it was lunch time, which I enjoyed in the canten. The meal was vegetables and liver. (Which I actually like). Yummy. I talked about this and that with my new colleagues, who of course are very interested in this strange person from a far away country sitting amongst them.  

Show time again with the younger students in 1^st year. 45 students who started at the scool a few days before my arrival.
They dont wear school uniforms yet. Because they are new students they dont have to use it until 1^st July.
I used the same pattern here more or less: My, pets, things I like, things I dont like and my highest wish.
They were quite amused when they heard that I was not fond of dried fish.
My highest wish is to stay healthy and that statement they understood completely
The students got the same assignment.
It went quite well.
I found the time to sing “John Jakob Jingleheimer Schmidt” with them.
They seemed to like that.

Finally I chose to work  with animals. We made a long list with names of animals ond they impressed me somewhat because they spelled quite well.
When we had the list made, I asked them to find the 5 fastest animals, the 5 most dangerous, the 5 sweetest, 5 animals with more colours and 5 animals with one colour.
The lesson came to an end, and although it apparantly was quite succesfull its impossible for me to know, how so many students experience what we did.
I am sure it varies a lot from student to student.

Even if I was only in action for 2 hours I was a bit exhausted when I came home with all my papers under my arm.

 - Welcome back to school, I said to myself on the way home.