First Day of Work

The banquet went well last night. Was most interesting to see the entire staff. About 25 people counting some assistant pastors from the church attended. The teacher of English was assigned to sit by me and translate for the evening. His English was really very good. Things were normal and calm until a cat from under the table scratched Mary Jane´s legs. A little jumping around and pushing back from the table ensued. We still don´t know why Mary Jane was selected by the cat twice for this treatment.

The approximation of time is beginning to be the expected. We were to be at work at 8:00 this morning. We arrived at a little past the hour only to find the gate locked. We held an English language instruction session on the bus with about four teachers for 30 minutes. Someone discovered you could lift the security fence and crawl through. A memorable first day entry to the place of work.

The teaching staff and the bus driver all apear very interested in learning English. We had several impromptu sessions of instruction throughout the day. We are impressed with the warm welcome in general we are receiving.

We spent much of the day (which ended at 1:30) looking through the British English text materials. I just can´t imagine how these materials work in actual practice. We want to be surprised that they work well.

We discovered that all the books shipped from Iowa and Florida have arrived. Now we have an interesting situation in that anything beyond the text book is considered än extra¨. The writing of a scope and sequence curriculum which is taught with whatever assists in meeting the goals of the curriculum is a new idea. We will work on this idea.