Watching the Rains Come
It has been kind of a tough week. Start with some good: I got into somewhat of a rhythm at LP Dillon. I had my second classes with my Tuesday kids and we got a little further. We talked about clothing and fashion and differences between Martinique and France and America. Plus, the classes I had at Bateliere on Friday were very nice, engaged and non-threatening, i.e. the opposite of the first class I had there. They asked good questions and seemed interested in what I was saying. I will be at Bateliere on Friday mornings. Possibly all day on Friday if the other section of teachers ever gets their act together and tells me when they need me. I might end up with a three-day weekend.
I guess the hardest things have been getting around, and getting my head around the job I’m doing here. This week I started having to come up with my first lesson plans, my first ideas for creating conversation and keeping the attention of students and imposing my first classroom rules both for myself and for the students. I didn’t know I would have to come up with these before the classes however, which made it a much more difficult task. I have been left on my own in about 80% of the classes without prior warning and it’s been okay. Nothing out of control, but I still feel a bit overwhelmed. I feel somewhat left out to dry by the teachers I am working with. They want me to do conversations, and have topics to discuss and help them with their speaking as much as possible. I was supposed to get a week of time to observe the classes, but that was thrown out the window on the first day. And now, in my second week of ASSISTING (mind you, that is the title of my job, assistant) I am given half of the class to take full charge of. So I am telling these teachers that I am not okay with being left alone when I have zero experience teaching in a classroom setting and zero ideas except from the ones I’m borrowing from online ESL resources.
Again, the contributing factor to all this seems to be the island style of thinking. “It’s okay, planning is not really something we do, you’ll be fine little ducky, go and swim, you’ll see”. (They actually do call people “little duck” as an affectionate term). I am a planner, I like advance notice, I like to know what’s coming at me and when. It doesn’t really occur to anyone to tell me important things like what we’re learning in class or what kinds of topics would complement their lesson plans well. They just wave their hand in the air and say “do what you want, it’s up to you”. Great. It was that way when we were in Sainte Luce with all the assistants suffering through those ridiculous ill-conceived evenings of “culture” when no one told us anything about what was going on and expected us to somehow guess when to show up and when to serve dinner, etc. Very important and necessary details are overlooked and often never received I find. Same thing with transportation too. You’d think they’d have good maps, or timetables of when the busses are supposed to come. No such luck. I’m pretty sure they don’t bother with the timetables because no one would ever stick to them anyway. And maps of Martinique are not detailed at all, in fact, they only have the main roads on them. So you really have to know your way around if you want to not get lost trying to get to someone’s house. Half the streets don’t even have names, you have to know them by sight. It’s going to take a lot of trial and error and asking a lot of people. So in sum, Karla = Type A and Martinique = Type B and Martinique is not going to change for Karla so Karla must adapt to Martinique. This realization has been a large factor in the toughness of this week. Realizing how I have some serious lessons to learn about patience, and being active and very intentional about getting important information and details from people. In America, they just do that. People give you details and important information. Things are planned and time limits are set and you are given things to expect. Not so in Martinique, not even close. I also have to learn to be confident in my speaking abilities. I can get my point across and the less I think about how my words in French are all Americanized and how I messed up that verb tense and how I put the pronoun in the wrong place, the less I will stop getting so hung up on perfection and just deal with things as they come along.
I have also had some serious ups this week. I found a great place to run. Downer immediately follows: I have to drive to get there. I figured out how to get the bus to Dillon and have mastered the route as well as discovered that there is a Carrefour (big fantastic grocery store) right by the stop, much to my delight. Now I can combine Tuesdays and Thursdays trips to school with trips to the grocery store. I was invited to eat lunch at an acquaintance’s house and it turned into 6 hours of hanging out with their family, and watching the entire cycle of precipitation happen in the sky from a beautiful, very large hill on which their house is perched. I watched the sunny skies start to become crowded with clouds that kept growing and growing until finally they blocked out the sun and then I saw a grey curtain fall over parts of the island and start to move it’s way slowly towards the hill and then I felt the beautiful tropical rain, and then the rain stopped and the sun came out and started the whole process over again. It was so cool to see how the pockets of weather affected one part and not another, and how I could see a patch of sunlight as well as a curtain of rain. That was a serious up. Another was listening to the exotic birds sing in the rainforest that surrounds this lovely home perched atop the hill, and watching hummingbirds flit from tree to tree. Another was feeling the fresh breeze come off the hill and blow a little bit of rain mist on my skin to cool me off. Another is using a machete to chop down wild sugar cane and crunch it while sucking out the sweet juice. Another is walking down a road empty-handed, and coming back with an armload of guava, avocado, breadfruit, orange and grapefruit, picked not 50 feet from the house.
My head and my heart are tired of fighting to reconcile themselves with this place. There are things that appeal to both, and then to one but not the other, and there are things that appeal to neither. This process of going through it and trying to make sense of it and figuring out what to do is very tiring. It’s a good thing I don’t ever go out because of the transportation issues or I would be a complete mess. The car situation will hopefully be solved this week. The ownership papers are apparently on their way. Huzzah! Now it will be a matter of learning how to navigate the island. More adventures to come.
I guess the hardest things have been getting around, and getting my head around the job I’m doing here. This week I started having to come up with my first lesson plans, my first ideas for creating conversation and keeping the attention of students and imposing my first classroom rules both for myself and for the students. I didn’t know I would have to come up with these before the classes however, which made it a much more difficult task. I have been left on my own in about 80% of the classes without prior warning and it’s been okay. Nothing out of control, but I still feel a bit overwhelmed. I feel somewhat left out to dry by the teachers I am working with. They want me to do conversations, and have topics to discuss and help them with their speaking as much as possible. I was supposed to get a week of time to observe the classes, but that was thrown out the window on the first day. And now, in my second week of ASSISTING (mind you, that is the title of my job, assistant) I am given half of the class to take full charge of. So I am telling these teachers that I am not okay with being left alone when I have zero experience teaching in a classroom setting and zero ideas except from the ones I’m borrowing from online ESL resources.
Again, the contributing factor to all this seems to be the island style of thinking. “It’s okay, planning is not really something we do, you’ll be fine little ducky, go and swim, you’ll see”. (They actually do call people “little duck” as an affectionate term). I am a planner, I like advance notice, I like to know what’s coming at me and when. It doesn’t really occur to anyone to tell me important things like what we’re learning in class or what kinds of topics would complement their lesson plans well. They just wave their hand in the air and say “do what you want, it’s up to you”. Great. It was that way when we were in Sainte Luce with all the assistants suffering through those ridiculous ill-conceived evenings of “culture” when no one told us anything about what was going on and expected us to somehow guess when to show up and when to serve dinner, etc. Very important and necessary details are overlooked and often never received I find. Same thing with transportation too. You’d think they’d have good maps, or timetables of when the busses are supposed to come. No such luck. I’m pretty sure they don’t bother with the timetables because no one would ever stick to them anyway. And maps of Martinique are not detailed at all, in fact, they only have the main roads on them. So you really have to know your way around if you want to not get lost trying to get to someone’s house. Half the streets don’t even have names, you have to know them by sight. It’s going to take a lot of trial and error and asking a lot of people. So in sum, Karla = Type A and Martinique = Type B and Martinique is not going to change for Karla so Karla must adapt to Martinique. This realization has been a large factor in the toughness of this week. Realizing how I have some serious lessons to learn about patience, and being active and very intentional about getting important information and details from people. In America, they just do that. People give you details and important information. Things are planned and time limits are set and you are given things to expect. Not so in Martinique, not even close. I also have to learn to be confident in my speaking abilities. I can get my point across and the less I think about how my words in French are all Americanized and how I messed up that verb tense and how I put the pronoun in the wrong place, the less I will stop getting so hung up on perfection and just deal with things as they come along.
I have also had some serious ups this week. I found a great place to run. Downer immediately follows: I have to drive to get there. I figured out how to get the bus to Dillon and have mastered the route as well as discovered that there is a Carrefour (big fantastic grocery store) right by the stop, much to my delight. Now I can combine Tuesdays and Thursdays trips to school with trips to the grocery store. I was invited to eat lunch at an acquaintance’s house and it turned into 6 hours of hanging out with their family, and watching the entire cycle of precipitation happen in the sky from a beautiful, very large hill on which their house is perched. I watched the sunny skies start to become crowded with clouds that kept growing and growing until finally they blocked out the sun and then I saw a grey curtain fall over parts of the island and start to move it’s way slowly towards the hill and then I felt the beautiful tropical rain, and then the rain stopped and the sun came out and started the whole process over again. It was so cool to see how the pockets of weather affected one part and not another, and how I could see a patch of sunlight as well as a curtain of rain. That was a serious up. Another was listening to the exotic birds sing in the rainforest that surrounds this lovely home perched atop the hill, and watching hummingbirds flit from tree to tree. Another was feeling the fresh breeze come off the hill and blow a little bit of rain mist on my skin to cool me off. Another is using a machete to chop down wild sugar cane and crunch it while sucking out the sweet juice. Another is walking down a road empty-handed, and coming back with an armload of guava, avocado, breadfruit, orange and grapefruit, picked not 50 feet from the house.
My head and my heart are tired of fighting to reconcile themselves with this place. There are things that appeal to both, and then to one but not the other, and there are things that appeal to neither. This process of going through it and trying to make sense of it and figuring out what to do is very tiring. It’s a good thing I don’t ever go out because of the transportation issues or I would be a complete mess. The car situation will hopefully be solved this week. The ownership papers are apparently on their way. Huzzah! Now it will be a matter of learning how to navigate the island. More adventures to come.
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