First day of school...

Today was our first day of school. It was... different. It actually was only our first day of training with all of the teachers from the CEDEI school (except there were still two people absent for some reason), but, as Nellie keeps saying, "Its the first day of the rest of your life!" That's true to a certain extent; this is the first time a job will be my primary occupation. Up until now, I've been a student, but today I became a profesora.
The day started out well enough for me. Unfortunately, Slocomb woke up to no hot water in the shower (I only shower every two days, so I didn't have to overcome that particular obstacle today). The hot water pump is light sensitive, so it only works automatically when it is sunny. Though it was light outside, the light hadn't yet turned the pump on. So poor Slocomb had to go outside in the cold to turn the light on over the pump to have hot water. But he did get his hot shower... eventually.
Everything else went smoothly this morning, but I was very glad that I had packed lunch the night before. We ended up leaving at the very tail end of our planned time frame (7:50), but it ended up being okay. We power-walked to the Feria Libre, about a 20 minute walk (16 this morning). As we were about 200 feet from the bus station (really just a curb), we spotted the bus that we needed, the number 27. Unfortunately, it pulled away before we got there. Luckily, the next bus came about 3 minutes later instead of the scheduled 10 minutes between buses. I had just been considering going to get a soda at the market when the bus pulled up, so I'm very glad that I was feeling lazy. Otherwise I would have missed the bus...
We ended up on the same bus as one of the other teachers from CEDEI, Jonatan, the school psychologist. I saw him get on the bus, and I somehow just knew that he was headed to the school as well. I wasn't courageous enough to ask him on the bus, but we had a good laugh once we got to the school and saw him standing there. He had gotten off of the bus two stops before us, meaning he had to walk up the hill instead of down, but he still beat us to the school.
Slocomb and I were the first international teachers who arrived this morning, which was fine. We met Gaby and Priscilla when we got there, and then the other teachers who trickled in, including Juana, Gladis, Carolina, and Tami.
About 8:45 we all went up to one of the classrooms and started talking about the year. We did some introductory games (i.e. draw a name out of the box and guess their favorite color, how old they were for their first date, and what they would be if they weren't a teacher). Unfortunately (but primarily due to the language barrier), the national and international teams were separated. I drew Slocomb's name, so it wasn't really fair. But I still didn't get all of the questions right: I said that he would be a football coach, but he said he'd be a professional student. Oh well. I was very proud of myself because I managed to answer the questions about Slocomb and then about myself in Spanish. Slocomb said that I used all of the right words, but that I "didn't use any grammar." Oh well, I guess its a start.
We toured around the school in the late morning, and the national teachers squabbled over who would get which classroom. They ended up resorting to "pick a number between one and ten," but interestingly, they kept picking until one person chose the right number. Priscilla won the classroom, by the way.
We also talked about expectations for the coming year, and went over some personnel policies. Then we talked about this monthly thing that each classroom does called "Projects." Its a way to sort of establish a theme beyond the curriculum and to tap into student interests. It sounds really cool, but I guess I'll elaborate more when we actually do one.
After talking about the projects, Ximena (the academic director of the school) started going over some other stuff that didn't for the most part pertain to the international team. I suppose it was good in a way, because I didn't understand hardly any of it. I think by this point (it was about 1pm), I was tired and hungry and so not able to concentrate on understanding. But Erin, the international teacher who probably has the most Spanish had a puzzled look on her face most of the time too, so I think I'm not the only one who missed a bunch. It was really frustrating at this point because the national teachers were discussing what was probably very important information for them, but there was really no point in having the international teachers there. We could have been off in a meeting with Maria talking about the important things that we need to know, such as what our schedules are, whether or not we're going to have classrooms or simply rotate to the grade level classrooms, what our curriculum is, how to talk to parents despite the language barrier, etc. Instead, we just ended up getting dizzy, confused and frustrated because we didn't understand enough to know whether or not we should try to understand!
So today ended on a sour note for a lot of reasons. I am still trying to be patient and wait, hoping that we will end up getting the information we need eventually. We were told that we would get the school calendar later on this week or early next week (yay!). That's been a personal source of stress, so I'll feel a lot better when I have it in my hands. Hopefully soon.
I also asked Maria again about adjusting the schedule so that I could teach something I wanted to teach (i.e. not computers). This has kind of been frustrating from the beginning, because I requested Art or Library (not knowing there was a social studies option) back in March. Instead I got assigned computers in July. And I wasn't super comfortable saying at that point, no I don't want to. So its partly my fault because I didn't bring it up sooner, but I'm still hoping we can get it worked out. I had talked to Maria about this last week because the more I think about it, the less comfortable I am with teaching computers. It really made me mad today, because on Friday she had said, "Oh, no problem. We'll set up a meeting with you (Leslie), me (Maria), and Ximena, and adjust the schedule so that you can be comfortable with it." However, today, she kinda gave me this exhasperated look and said, "Well, that means I'll have to change the whole schedule, and I don't know who to switch you with because everyone else is happy." The really frustrating thing is that I've talked to the other international teachers (the people with whom I'd need to switch), and they are all committed to making sure that we ALL are happy, not just 4 out of 5. I feel like we could work the schedule out on our own, but unfortunately, we have no concept yet of what the schedule even is! We're supposed to meet later on this week as the international team, and maybe we can get it worked out then. In the mean time, I'm still in the dark as to what subject I'm going to be teaching, much less the curriculum or supplies I need.
Perhaps, the hardest part about today was the fact that most of it centered around the national teachers, all of whom are already familiar with the curriculum and the way that the school works. The people who really need the orientation and planning time are the international teachers, but there was very little directed towards us besides general personnel policies.
I guess I should qualify all of this a little bit. This year is the first year that the international teachers will be teaching specific subjects instead of simply partnering with a single national teacher and staying with one class the whole time. And this is Maria's first time being the English coordinator, so she's trying to figure out her role as much as anyone else. But, so far, things have been very disorganized and haphazard. Maybe its a cultural thing, so the Ecuadorians don't expect things to be prepared ahead of time and well organized, but it was really frustrating for me to try to navigate the unpredictable mixture of Spanish and English, national teacher and international teacher, and pertinent and superfluous information.
All in all, probably not my best first day at school. All I can hope is that each day will get better from here.