-Dies-

I really should be making worksheets for tomorrow's junior classes. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to make them. Since I got here the junior classes have been... difficult. I'll use the word difficult because some people might disapprove of the words I wrote first.

So, difficult.

This morning I asked Hishge how long she would spend teaching each of the junior classes. The pastor had told me she would teach the first half, and I would teach the second half.
"I'm sorry, I'm busy" she said.
My heart rate instantly went through the roof. This meant that instead of teaching two half hour classes, I had to teach two full hour classes. I got on the computer and started madly adding to the worksheets I have prepared.

One of the major differences between the junior classes and the adult classes is that the students in the junior classes don't talk. Now, the adults don't talk much either, but if you ask them a direct question they will flounder around and try to answer it. The floundering is the point of the whole thing; if they have to think about it they are learning. It also gives me a point to correct their grammar and suggest words.
When the students in the junior class are asked a question they give a long, mournful sigh, stare just past your right shoulder, and then mumble to themselves in one of many non-english languages. This means that if I don't have something for them to do during every second of class it is absolutely miserable.

I looked at the schedule. There were two classes, Child III and Child V. The last term we had had Child I and Child II (I thought), so I was somewhat confused as to how these had morphed into III and V. However, I decided not to be concerned about it. I downloaded stories off the internet, wrote questions, made scrambled sentences, made grammar questions and created a word search using an online word search generator. I then repeated the process for the second class, trying to make the questions slightly harder, but not too hard.

Then, knowing we'd be stuck with 15 minutes at the end of each class, I created a matching game to build vocabulary.

After three hours of work I rushed downstairs to get the printer, so that I could print off the 40 odd pages of activities. Itgil protested, saying that she needed the printer. I promised I would bring it back in five minutes. That promise part wasn't very wise.

The Hindu god Callalamma has one purpose: to guard the buttermilk. I'm not exactly sure what supernatural calamities would befall the buttermilk if Callalamma were to cease guarding it, but who really wants to find out? Buttermilk is already odd enough without supernatural calamities.

Unfortunately, due to my Judeo-Christian beliefs, I cannot accept the idea that there is a god specifically devoted to the care of printers. I can, however, easily believe that there is a demon who's sole purpose is to cause difficulties with printers. The absence of a printer god and the presence of a printer demon might explain why printers behave the way they do.

The printer demon was hard at work on this day.
As quickly as I possibly could I began opening documents, selecting the appropriate options, and sending them to the printer. I then waited as the printer hummed and churned for the next few minutes, printing out an impressive stack of papers. I then took the stack and started organizing the papers so that they could be stapled.
To my horror, I saw that the words on the pages were barely visible. The printer had run out of ink somewhere around page two, but it wasn't self-aware enough to notice. It had continued printing the other three dozen pages, dutifully piling up blank garbage for me to throw away. That's the other problem with printers, they aren't self aware.
I ran back downstairs to ask Itgil if we had replacement ink cartridges. She looked at me blankly.
"Ink cartridges?"
"Yes!" I said. "Ink for the printer."
"No, ask Gaana order them" she said.
"I did, last month" I said.
The last comment went unnoticed. Itgil has learned to tell the difference between me trying to explain something I'm frustrated about and me simply complaining. She ignores the complaining, which has done little to shut me up.

I went to Gaana. "My printer is out of ink", I said.
"Your printer is new!" she said.

I was somewhat confused by this. For one thing, the printer wasn't really mine. For another, it certainly wasn't new, not even in the broadest sense. I looked at her blankly.

"Your new printer, upstairs" she said. She then proceeded to take me upstairs and show me the new printer, which had been hiding in a large Hewlett-Packard box on the desk next to mine for the past month. Ah.

Glancing at the clock I saw that I had half an hour left. I tore into the box, took out the printer, put the installation CD in, and nearly broke down. The entire thing was in Korean.
I stumbled blindly through the installation process, but eventually I got through the Korean part. A familiar windows printer wizard then opened, and cheerily told me that if I were to install the printer the computer would spontaneously burst into flames... or crash, which is pretty much the same thing.

I panicked. I ran downstairs, and again begged Gaana to let me use her printer. This time she consented, and I quickly emailed everything to myself. Sweet success! Three minutes before class I had my stories and activities.

I went upstairs, and saw that there was only one student. This was bad. Not only was it bad because the student was alone, but it was bad because she was the wrong student. This student had been in the upper level classes before, and this was the lower level class, wasn't it?

Unfortunately, it wasn't. Two hours later, after stumbling through classes consisting of people who couldn't even understand the worksheets I had made, I went back down to Itgil.

"Umm, Itgil", I said. "Why is it that the students in level V are behind the students in level III?"
"the students in level V were level IV last term, and the students in level III were level II last term" she said, looking at me as if it was the stupidest question she'd ever been asked.

Ah. Of course. Why on earth would a level number have anything to do with one's degree of skill?

So now I have to rethink how I'm going to teach these classes. One of them used to be Brandon's class, that's why the level numbers are different. Both of them are going to be a real pain. The youngest student in Brandon's class is nine, so I'm not sure she could handle the worksheets even if they were in Mongolian.
Now I have three hours to make worksheets for both classes, but all this rambling has given me a few ideas.

Ciao.