Its supposed to be fun, right?..

I used to think that teaching english was supposed to be fun, not just for the student but for the teacher as well. Unfortunately though i guess i was more than a little wrong. The morale of the school is now at its lowest that i have ever seen. Strange how just two people can have such a effect on so many aint it? I just spent 30 minutes emailing the boss of the school asking him to do something about it before it becomes that bad there that the damage will be irriversable and the school crashes. This just two weeks after the bloody teachers meeting too, how fucked up are they going to let things get before they finally decide to do something about it? Obviously pretty fucked up from the looks of things. Giving so much power to two secretaries though was always going to be a no brainer idea from the start but hey no one gives a shit!!

Yesterday i had to spend 10 minutes hunting for batteries to the remote controls and this ten minutes that i lost the secretaries had the cheek to take off my time sheet. I had asked the secretary but she just wasnt interested, funny but its their job to check the school inventory and see if they have to order anything but i guess that too has become a teachers job. If they spent less time messing around planning their trips to the bakers and other places they go to in the school time and more on their job things like this wouldnt happen would they?

It was lucky that i went to the bank this morning as it meant that i could call into the other school to use their internet while i wait for Roberta to finish her training at the health center. The other schools internet has apparently gone down, funny it was working just fine last night though. Another screw up from the secretaries no doubt but it will get blamed on the teachers.. as usual!!

Roberta had to go to the hospital here yesterday, we had gone the evening before but Roberta felt worse so we returned. Its an experience to go to the public hospitals here in Brasil. You have to wait a long time in the daytime to get to see anyone. This is the same for all people but you can imagine that sometimes people lose it in the hospital ranting and complaining and yesterday morning was no exeption. There are no doctors surguries here as in the UK so most people have to go straight to the hospital even with very minor things which makes huge queues of people. It has to be said though that the treatment Roberta got was good, i got to see just about everything they did including the administering of her medication too. Of course it took a long time, we entered the hospital at 8.20am and left around 1.30pm but we had to wait for a drip in Robertas arm with her meds in it to run out. The hospital though was in a goodish condition, unlike the health center which needs a few repairs doing to it. They have to get rid of these corrupt politicians who steal all of the money so that they have more her to spend on the health service. In time i think things will get better and better. Having a girlfriend who works in the hospitals here gives me a unique insight into how things work, both good and bad. Hopefully things will improve alot, especially for poor people. On a good note though, all of the elderly people i saw there were treated straight away as soon as a doc was available to save them waiting, more docs would help though i think to get the queues down faster.

I guess i had best go and meet Roberta for lunch. I think i am supposed to make lunch today too, looks like it`ll be pasta as its fast and easy to do hahaha!!!

posted at 8:30 AM by john |   

Its supposed to be fun, right?..

I used to think that teaching english was supposed to be fun, not just for the student but for the teacher as well. Unfortunately though i guess i was more than a little wrong. The morale of the school is now at its lowest that i have ever seen. Strange how just two people can have such a effect on so many aint it? I just spent 30 minutes emailing the boss of the school asking him to do something about it before it becomes that bad there that the damage will be irriversable and the school crashes. This just two weeks after the bloody teachers meeting too, how fucked up are they going to let things get before they finally decide to do something about it? Obviously pretty fucked up from the looks of things. Giving so much power to two secretaries though was always going to be a no brainer idea from the start but hey no one gives a shit!!

Yesterday i had to spend 10 minutes hunting for batteries to the remote controls and this ten minutes that i lost the secretaries had the cheek to take off my time sheet. I had asked the secretary but she just wasnt interested, funny but its their job to check the school inventory and see if they have to order anything but i guess that too has become a teachers job. If they spent less time messing around planning their trips to the bakers and other places they go to in the school time and more on their job things like this wouldnt happen would they?

It was lucky that i went to the bank this morning as it meant that i could call into the other school to use their internet while i wait for Roberta to finish her training at the health center. The other schools internet has apparently gone down, funny it was working just fine last night though. Another screw up from the secretaries no doubt but it will get blamed on the teachers.. as usual!!

Roberta had to go to the hospital here yesterday, we had gone the evening before but Roberta felt worse so we returned. Its an experience to go to the public hospitals here in Brasil. You have to wait a long time in the daytime to get to see anyone. This is the same for all people but you can imagine that sometimes people lose it in the hospital ranting and complaining and yesterday morning was no exeption. There are no doctors surguries here as in the UK so most people have to go straight to the hospital even with very minor things which makes huge queues of people. It has to be said though that the treatment Roberta got was good, i got to see just about everything they did including the administering of her medication too. Of course it took a long time, we entered the hospital at 8.20am and left around 1.30pm but we had to wait for a drip in Robertas arm with her meds in it to run out. The hospital though was in a goodish condition, unlike the health center which needs a few repairs doing to it. They have to get rid of these corrupt politicians who steal all of the money so that they have more her to spend on the health service. In time i think things will get better and better. Having a girlfriend who works in the hospitals here gives me a unique insight into how things work, both good and bad. Hopefully things will improve alot, especially for poor people. On a good note though, all of the elderly people i saw there were treated straight away as soon as a doc was available to save them waiting, more docs would help though i think to get the queues down faster.

I guess i had best go and meet Roberta for lunch. I think i am supposed to make lunch today too, looks like it`ll be pasta as its fast and easy to do hahaha!!!

posted at 8:11 AM by john |   

Monday, May 24, 2004

Harry Potter

Harry Potter Website

JK Rowling Website

Just been looking at these sites here, actually i like Harry Potter, for a start hes english hahaha!!! Plus in the films all of the actors and actresses are all British too. Its nice to see something British doing so well :-). Alot of my students read the Harry Potter books too so Ariel, Fabiana and Larissa you should find these sites real interesting right? ;-)

apparently there is supposed to be a love interest between two of the characters in the books. I think its Hermione and Ron myself as they are always dodging around each other and Harry loves the cute asian girl hahaha!! Of course i could be wrong but.. i still think its going to be Hermione and Ron snuggling up together somewhere in one of the books lol. Who knows, maybe Harry will get it together with that dead girl in the girls toilets, whats her name again.. Oh right Moaning Murtle!!

Time to go..

posted at 3:40 PM by john |   

Long day..

Wow today is dragging out into a long day, every minute seems to last five or more lol. Still once my group gets here later on it'll go alot faster thankfully. I think its because i was awake really early yesterday and spent the whole day in the sun fishing with my friend and Roberta. And no we didnt catch a huge fish either hahaha!! Just nice to get out of the city for a while and we were literally miles and miles from anywhere :-)

I have to find some stuff online for Roberta to use with her extra classes, stuff about prepositions. Sounds riveting doesnt it? Luckily though there are loads of websites that i can use to get some stuff for her, all sorts of downloads are always available on many of the teachers and TOEFL websites. Its a pity though that the students just dont read the websites themselves as we have free internet here at all five of the schools. I guess they prefer that we explain though as its easier (or they are just getting a little lazy hahaha!!).

I've been looking through the list of new films that are cmoing out here. Brasil is always a little behind everywhere else with new releases, i think its because it takes a little longer with them having to add the subtitles, i was told that they have to make the subtitles so that they can be read at any time of the day on the tv ready for when they relase to the tv networks. I have no idea if this is true or not though. I wanna see Van Helsing as i watched some of it at the other CCAA and it looks really good. I saw online that purist horror fans were slagging it off but i think that they need to remember that its just entertainment and that we dont have to anylyze everything that appears on a cinema screen. Also there are actually quite a few dvds that i havent seen too, i have plenty to catch up on now which is nice as usually i have to wait all the time for new films to be released.

As you can see, Frankenstein looks quite different from the older movie versions. From what i saw of the movie hes apparently quite intelligent as well. there is a list of movies that i wanna see, i gotta get my student card all sorted out as soon as possible ;-)

Okay time for me to go search for Robertas stuff..

posted at 2:19 PM by john |