Yesterday I had a particularly terrifying morning meeting that turned out to not be so bad in the end, followed by a pleasant encounter in the market place and finally a run in with a clumsy bat.
1. The morning meeting was the Parent-Teacher meeting. Meaning; all my student's parents would come, sit in the sala and look at me cross eyed while I bumbled through the meeting in my baby-Portuguese about how their students are LITTLE JERKS sometimes and perfect baby angels even Less-Of-The-Time and how sorry, but they all failed Biology because they didn't turn in any homework. I only had 2 days to worry about how this meeting was going to Ruin My Life (because really my life is constant humiliation--misunderstandings, cultural missteps and general awkwardness, but at least it's an adventure and the food is good).
On Thursday morning I walked into the Sala dos Professors to pick up the Dossificacao (that's the curriculum guide that I use to plan my lessons) and I see Serge hard at work with some paperwork. He hands me a stack. They're report-card forms.
"already I gave to the students" I say.
Serge says something quickly that I don't quite get, something about parents....then he turns and has a 15 minute conversation about some 5 point (on a 20 point scale this is significant) discrepancies in the 12th graders final Portuguese grades. I tried to follow but there was a lot of yelling and I already had a headache. Instead I was getting worked up about why I was holding a stack of report cards when I'd already told the kids their grades the week before.
When Serge was done with his impassioned discussion he turned back to me and patiently patiently explained that there would be a parent meeting on Saturday and that I would give it.
"No one tells me anything! How am I to know these things?" I was cranky
"It's written on the board." It wasn't. So I stalked home and brooded for a while about How Unfair My Life Is before I went to find my Ped Director to tell him that I couldn't possibly give a parent meeting alone without even knowing how a Parent Meeting is supposed to go. I caught him as he was leaving for the day and he was glaring at me and trying to leave the room as I was explaining my reservations. Then he started laughing and said something like "Oh, wait till the director hears this"
He took me into the Director's office with the other Ped Director and had a good laugh before telling me to explain myself again.
Good news is the other Ped Director is a lot nicer and more understanding and he gave me a run down of how the meeting goes and then told me that my Portuguese isn't THAT bad. On the morning of the meeting Serge came and helped me--which is to say that he mostly told the parents that their kids are too goofy and need to study more and then talked about me in Changana--something about how I'm nice but I've only been speaking Portuguese for 3 months and then I read the statistics of the class and then miraculously it was over.
2. In the afternoon I walked to the market to pick up some vegetables. I paused in front of an empty stall to pack my backpack. When I stood up to shoulder my bag again a little old lady sitting underneath a display of Goodwill t-shirts called me over by flapping her hand at me. I walked over and said hello and her grandson, one of my students appeared from around the corner. I said good afternoon and asked if he was studying and we all laughed and then as I turned to go the old woman handed me a pair of socks. A present!
3. At Kim's house later, we were cooking dinner and listening to Justin Bieber (our usual...) when the bats began to take their leave from her roof/their roost. They stream out from under the eaves and we always pause to watch them dive headfirst towards the sidewalk before they start flapping and fly away. Hundred of bats. One of them didn't manage to get enough lift and made a horrible smacking sound when it hit the sidewalk. It began clumsily and frantically crawling around, trying to crawl up the side of the house to get high enough to try its flight again. I guess bats can't fly unless they're falling first. I was going to scoop it up with a dust pan and lob it off the porch. Kim was encouraging me.
"If you get bit and have to go to the city for Rabies shots and they put you up in a hotel and give you Per-diem I'm coming with"
So I crouched low and held my hat in one hand and the dust pan in another and shuffled towards the bat. It was so terrified by my that it renewed its awkward shuffle and managed to get enough purchase on the wall to climb high enough to get enough air under its wings to fly.
The end. My life in Africa.
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