It’s all downhill (Written 2/2/07)

This wee has been interesting from a weather angle but quite miserable from a health angle. For the majority of the week, I have been sick with some strange flu/cold that I got on Sunday but me being me, I couldn't just take a day off and call in sick (how weird would that be to call in sick to a place you live 5 feet away from!) But this felt like the longest week of my life. And not only was I battling the virus, it also felt like I was in a battle against my year 12 class. One of the good things about staying in the same place, is that sometimes you get to see where you were from a new perspective. This has happened in regards to my year 12 and year 13 class. Since most of my year 13 class already knows me pretty well and know how I teach, I have a pretty easy time getting participation out of them and getting them to ask questions – they realize now that the only way they really learn computers is by asking questions (which is how anyone really learns how computers work – that or they're good at using Google, like me!). The year 12 kids from this year are reminding me of just how far these year 13 kids have come since I taught them last year. This year and last year, the year 12 class started off as timid and didn't ask any questions at all – and it's rough for me to talk to myself for 7 hours a day with kids just staring at me. Unfortunately, sometimes it feels like they've (the year 12 kids) have just been beaten up throughout their school years (mentally not physically) and have been brought up with the mindset of "you write your notes, you talk in unison with the class and you ask very few questions". I think it's definitely a shell shock to them for me to ask them questions and try to get a response – they feel they don't know the answers because computers are suppose to be complex. But they're not, they just SEEM complex and it's sometimes hard to get that point across. I've told them before in class, I don't care if you get an answer wrong – you never learn if you get everything right – but I do care that they don't try to answer the question. An example from today is that I asked a student to point to what she thought the UPS was, a pretty simple request – all you have to do is point, no verbal response needed. Unfortunately, it seems she had a fear of being wrong and thus didn't want to guess but I don't give up that easily. I spent about 3 minutes just trying to motivate her to take a chance, take the risk of being wrong (and in the end she wasn't, she pointed to the right object) but I just don't understand where this fear of being wrong comes from. As the other great MJ (You know the one from Chicago…no wait, the one from North Carolina) once said "because I failed, I succeeded" (or something to that affect – don't quote me) you can't be successful unless you fail but it seems that these kids seem to think you have to be perfect, failure is not an option. I really wish I knew where that mentality came from. But my year 13 kids give me hope because they started out in the same place last year and now they are significantly better in class and are willing to be wrong because they know I won't punish them for being wrong. Even in year 2, this teaching deal is a growing experience.

From a weather stand point, this week has been about on and off again rain. I know it's the rainy season but sheesh…this is ridiculous. One minute it's drizzling and not doing so bad the next minute the rain is coming sideways and I'm bolting out of the lab trying to shut the doors and windows in the other labs. The funny thing is, all week I was really hoping it would rain like it did last year when it rained for a week straight that way school would be cancelled and I could take the day off to rest and get over this illness. There were parts of the day (or early in the morning) where it would just be coming down in buckets but eventually it would let up and go to a 'normal' level of rain – basically just teasing me all week long. "I could rain like this all the time and help you out, but I won't". The rain was being mean! But on Friday (the one day of the week I didn't want it to rain a lot, so the weekend weather would seem to be good) afternoon, the rain decided it was time to drop a ton of water on the city. I adventured into town to do a few errands and run to the Peace Corps office to talk to some folks (a lot of people are in this weekend for a softball game and the Super Bowl – softball in this weather is going to be messy) but I left from school at about 2:30pm. Now a few months ago, the transportation department renovated one of the bridges that leads up to my house (they are now working on the bridge – Alamagoto – that leads directly to my house on the Moamoa Road) so that it would be less flood prone. Before the renovation, it was basically a concrete bridge that dipped and when it flooded just a bit, water would flow over top of the bridge and when it rained a lot it would look like a straight river and you could not see the bridge. So when they renovated/rebuilt it they lifted the bridge up about 5 feet and made concrete holes underneath the bridge so that the water would flow more easily under, rather the over, the bridge. When I left school and crossed over this bridge  on the bus, the water was flowing fast but it was still going underneath the bridge (whereas before, the bridge would have been flooded) but when I came back over the same bridge 2 hours later you could hardly see the bridge. The flooding became so bad the river was flowing over the bridge and pushing large tree trunks along the way - it looked like the only vehicles that could pass over this bridge were high up ones. So it seems that no matter how high they build these flood bridges, the river will find a way to climb over it.

And last but not least, it seems that if I ever do get a tattoo it should be a giant S on my chest because a lot of people seem to think I'm Superman and can do everything for everyone. Now for the most part I'm very much a person who likes to help people but even I can be stretched a bit thin at times and we're 2 weeks into the school term and I can see my thinning point coming already. Today we got our 17 computers we ordered before Christmas, 7 of them were Dells like the rest of my lab computers (this is good) the other 10 were IBMs (this is bad, because if they break I have a very limited supply of backup parts AND I have to set them up differently then the dells which takes MORE TIME) and my principal wants me to setup a mock 4^th computer lab for our opening mass next Friday. Now a few important folks might show up but the room has no locks and no windows and I don't want to risk damaging them for a horse and pony show. On top of the glamour show next Friday, there's the pressure on me to get some semblance of a 4^th lab going so that we can deal with the classes that have to go back to their room because our timetable is set for 4 (or 5, don't know how I'm gonna solve those clashes) when we only have 3 labs now. There's also the chore of setting up the internet café (which means I have to ask around about whether we should go with broadband or dialup – which means MORE TIME) and a school close to us recently got in a shipment of computers. They want to set up a computer lab and have requested that I help (i.e. do it by myself) setup their lab – who's going to teach these classes, I have no idea. And then there's another person Kevin knows who wants to setup computer labs at two schools on Savaii – and will probably want help (i.e. read above) setting up those two labs. Then throw in that somewhere along the way I kind of became the go to tech guy for Peace Corps (which is probably the one extra pressure I don't really mind because it's been a cool transition to this point and no one seems to be just taking me for granted) and you can understand how there could be a storm brewing on the horizon. My only hope is that I get a majority of this stuff out of the way during the first term and just use the second term to find out what a "normal" schedule might feel like (i.e. not setting up labs like I was some kind of computer drug kingpin). We'll see – but like Groundhog Day, Sunday will determine the future. The Bears win, there's a few more weeks of stress free life awaiting me. If the Bears lose, the storm might come early – GO BEARS!!!

In case you're curious, I'm finally over my flu – it cleared up today after I decided I needed to take a break from work and take care of my body. On Wednesday I got over 9 hours of sleep and that seems to have done the trick – plus, the soup my dad sent me (and soup cost a fortune here so I really appreciated it)