Thursday night already, which means I've been gone for almost a week already! Crazy? Oh yes. Last Friday began the insanely long trip to essentially the other side of the world. Flight #1 departing at 2:30pm, and finally arriving in Auckland on Sunday around 9:00am. That would be 24 1/2 hours of travel, not considering the time differences; that's REAL travel time. Ouch. Surprisingly, however, the last flight, that wonderful 12 hour one, was about as comfortable as it could be considering. Apart from a grumpy man sitting next to me, it was quite enjoyable. We were served an actually tasty (and I mean good!) dinner of chicken and pasta almost immediately into the flight, along with a free glass of wine. Of course, I was all over that. After getting a decent amount of sleep for a plane ride, I relaxed a bit, watched a movie, and before I knew it, we were descending. The staff was fantastic; very friendly and helpful. They really made it as pleasant as they could for us. After a smooth trip through customs, I found myself being pulled into a welcoming hug from my new host mom, Rachel. To say she's awesome is a huge understatement. I don't know how she did it, but even after a few days, I feel so welcomed and comfortable in my new temporary home. I appreciate everything she's done for me so far, and it's a really good feeling to know I have a nice place to go to at the end of the day.
On to Monday. Trying to ignore the nagging jet-lag, Katie, Beth, and I headed to Swanson School bright and early Monday morning. I met my cooperating teacher, my students, and the second student teacher, a woman from the University of Auckland who will be in the class for 3 weeks. Right from the get-go, I could tell that this would be an...interesting experience. My year 7/8 students (ages 11-13) are very rambunctious (you know those hormones), wild, and pretty rebellious. In addition, I'm not sure how to go about "sharing" teaching time with the other student teacher as of right now. It's difficult knowing that I should probably have more seniority between the two of us, as I am in my final year and she is only in her first year of college, however she is older so by instinct I look to her sometimes for mentoring. I need to be careful with this. Besides these issues, the education system is a lot more different than I thought it'd be. It's hard to explain how, but the structure and goals(?) are just different. I'll try to explain it better as time goes on. I'm trying to keep an open mind with everything, and I am excited to face these challenges, as I know it will only help me in the future. Plus, one thing I'm super excited for is the fact that I will have the opportunity to teach my students some Spanish! To think, I'll have my experience with teaching Spanish in another English-speaking country! :)
Well, I could definitely write more, and I'm sure most of this was scatter-brainish, but now you know just a bit of my life here so far. I'm still sick, but I'm hoping it'll be going away soon (not that I haven't been hoping that for weeks now), especially with my early bed time...it's 10:00pm here, an hour later than my bedtime every other night I've been here. :) This weekend we're planning on going to the Coromandel Peninsula, which I'm pretty pumped for. If anyone's seen Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, the beginning part of the movie (when they first enter Narnia) is where I'm heading. Exciting!
Until next time.
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