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I could not leave the faithful readers of Becca's blog stressed about her welfare, could I?

As expected, the clouds from yesterday have passed. The rain has turned to a light snow (which is better because at least you don't get as wet.) The headache appears to have worn itself out after a night of good solid sleep WITHOUT drugs. Yar, today was better.

I don't know if the kids were markedly better today or if my outlook was, but I actually found myself laughing and smiling in two of my classes (and this time not AT the kids.)

In my 8th grade class all the boys skipped with the exception of the two who are not jerks, which made for a very pleasant hour. Kaloyan, one of the boys, would simply not sit and I asked him what the beef was and he said he was antsy, so I decided to have them all do stretches. As soon as all the girls stood to do them, Kaloyan and Atanas (the boys) sat down in the back row and, in Bulgarian, willed the girls' pants to fall down. It was a funny moment, and I appreciate Kaloyan's sense of humor when it is not being plain disruptive. He speaks decent English too, but he is just so darn distracted and lazy and defiant (a typical boy his age) that he frustrates me. Usually if I tell him I am dissapointed in his behavior during a lesson he shapes up for a while.

I don't know if this is just me becoming a better teacher or the loosening my standards to prevent the onslaught of madness, but I am learning to kind of follow what the kids want to do in a lesson so long as it is mildy productive. The 4 girls in that class who speak pretty well wanted to take this Boy Quiz someone had made up rather than do the lesson in the book, so I told them that if they asked the questions in English they could do it. They tried to cheat and slip Bulgarian questions in, but I pounced on that. I also taught them "Knock Knock" jokes and they made one in Bulgarish:

Knock Knock
Who's there?
Tih. (Bulgarian adjective for "quiet")
Tih who? (sounds like "Tiho!" the Bulgarian command for "Be quiet!")
Geez, I wasn't even being loud!

I think on Thursday I will teach them MASH if they get through the lesson.

Then I had my 5a class...the huge, slowly-getting-out-of-hand class. There is a massive dichotomy in that class between the kids who know a good bit of English and will probably track out of this place after 7th grade to go to Yambol and those who still can't read the alphabet, despite my offerings of extra help and classes. I was in a good mood today, so the chaos was not as wearing on me.

We were going over new words from the chapter and I was writing the English and Bulgarian on the board. One of the boys yelled, "Hey missus! Your handwriting is better than mine!" to which I quipped, "I know!" and we all laughed. Sometimes I messed up a word, and the kids all chuckled and rushed up to the board to help me. I hate getting bumrushed even in the best of moods, so I had them call out the letters to me if I didn't know the word. With 30 kids yelling at you in a foreign language, it's hard to understand anyone and we had some laughs trying to get me to figure out the correct spelling.

In the middle of the class, one of the other boys yelled, "Missus, this is the first time you've laughed in our class!" This might be true, and I told them that it would happen more often if they made me happy. They contemplated this, so perhaps I will have my happiness to use a weapon (I think they won't like to see me upset now that they know I have a nice smile. Teehee.) I am not blindly optimistic though. It's all very day-by-day here, if you couldn't tell.

After them I had my sixth graders, and they were okay until the three toxic boys came in late. Like most of my classes, they'd be fine if I could just get rid of those three boys...Well, one in particular who drives the other two astray. This is where In School Suspension would come in handy. That class is almost entirely male, and I have found that boys are much easier led into loud, disruptive behavior than girls. While in play situations I prefer the rough-and-tumble boy life, I definately like teaching girls en masse more.

And that was that for my Day Proper. I had a SIP that no one showed for (no doubt it's too cold for them) and a lesson they also didn't show for (again, it's cold). Now I am home, chilling with the cat who is pissed because I cut her fingernails this afternoon. Tomorrow the Peace Corps doctor is coming to town to do a Medical Site Visit, so I suppose I ought to clean a bit for him lest he report, "PCV Rebecca Grudzina lives in absolute squalor which will no doubt result in her contraction of avian flu and cockroach infestations." (No, I am really not that gross. It was only a rhetorical device. However, Dr. Robert does not need to see my drying underwear all over and a pile of dirty dishes in my sink.)

Oh, and by the by, check out the link under the my Go Here! section for my Flickr page....In the future I will put my awe-inspiring photos there because it is way easier and more asthetically pleasing than having them strewn about on this blog.