19 Oct 2009
Today was a bit of a hard day. I wasn’t picked up until nearly 10am. My student was already waiting to start. One of the co-ordinators wanted to make sure the room was clear, so I said I would just go check my emails in the meantime. She didn’t come back and tell me she had cleared the room. A short time later she came in to remind me that the student was waiting.
So I trotted of down to the lab with my one student and proceeded to start the class. The lab had some budding animators already in there. An army of ants. Every time I looked at the mouse to start my demo I was confronted with an ant or two, or three. So I took my student out for a wee walk and asked reception to see if their cleaning lads could do a purge. Unfortunately I can’t speak Ant, otherwise I may have invited them to join in.
As we were walking around outside I noticed that my army of ants were the small variety. There were some whoppers milling around. Just one of these ones could have eaten my whole army and still been hungry. When we returned, they were all gone. (Must have finished their lesson.)
Over here you have to really slow down when you are speaking. At one point my student said that you can speak normally if you like. So I did. He soon changed his mind. Later in the day, I met one of the staff. She wanted to use the office to make a phone call. I was speaking slowly as usual, until I realised that her English was very good. It turned out that she had lived in England for a while and nearly every school she had been to, she had been taught by New Zealanders.
20 Oct 2009
I had Maya in the class today. That’s Ashutosh’s wife. She will be coming as often as she can so that she can take over when I go home. I guess we will have to see how that goes. She seems as busy as Ashutosh. I arrived earlier today. 8.30 am. So I had a few moments to catch up on emails and settle in for the day.
I’m not sure how much we can get through in any given day. The language barrier is not too bad but the comprehension of the use of the language can be challenging. Design terms and computer technology terms. They all use words that say another thing in normal English. Still, Maya seemed to pick things up fairly quickly.