I'm Fine

So I went out with a couple of the teachers from school, and when i came home I discovered several concerned messages going on about earthquakes and epicenters and tsunamis.

#1 I am no where near the earthquake, I didn't feel it, everything is fine, nothing broke
#2 It would have been highly unlikely that I would have been affected by the tsunami seeing as that there were several land masses between me and the path it would have taken. And all warning were quickly called off.

I am fine, please don't worry.

View From My Bedroom Window

 I live in the jungle

Internet

So I've been here a month. The first thing I did when I got here was sign up for internet for my house.  It still hasn't come, apparently they'll be coming this week, we'll see if it happens this time.

In the mean time I'll just continue to hang out at school. It looks like I'm being really dedicated, coming in early, staying late, showing up on weekends. But in reality I'm just downloading tones of TV shows and movies. Don't tell my boss.

Why Americans Have A Better Banking System

Now you may think I've gone crazy or started watching far too much FOX News (one of the few english channels I get) but right now its how I feel. The Americans have a better banking system.

Now you might be inclined to point out the economic/banking meltdown of 2008. Or that there are 10 zillion banks through out the US that don't seem to have any safe guards in place and quote a bunch of other things that prove that the Canadian system is 10 times better and more stable because of all our regulations. And yes international community thinks we're better, and yes the world has turned to Canadians to fix problems. But currently I hate it.

Why because my american co-workers got their pay transferred to them on Friday which arrived in their banks on Saturday (which was actually Friday in the states).  I however got my pay wired to me on Friday, but I have to wait until the wire transfer goes through all kinds of regulations and checks because thats what our system does, it checks things and takes forever in the off chance that I'm an arms dealer and being paid money by a company like "We Sell Drugs" or "Human Trafficking R US", not that any criminal organization would name their company that. But you get the point. (please note that I'm a teacher being paid by a school, with no criminal ties)

Not that I need the money now, but I would like to know in a kidnapping/hostage situation where large sums of cash would have to be transferred in order to save my life that it could be done swiftly. Instead while all my American counterparts are let go I will remain and have to try and explain to the angry men with automatic weapons and machetes that the money's been transferred its just going to take some time because its a Canadian system.

Holidays

So one of the best perks about international teaching is that in foreign countries they really embrace the idea of holidays. Where in North America they are really struck about how many days you have to teach out of the year, and that there must be a significant reason as to why you have a day off school, here that's not really an issue.

This is why last weekend was a 4 day weekend, followed by 3 teaching days, and then yet again another long weekend! Do I know what they're for? No. But everything still seems to function the same, so they can't be that important.

Unfortunately my passport is in limbo, in the process of getting my work visa, which means I can't really go anywhere. But on the plus side 3 day work weeks are awesome!

Art Supplies!

So today my art supplies finally arrived! These are the supplies that were ordered from the States by the former art teacher.  So obviously I was really excited and couldn't wait to open the boxes. This afternoon during prep I went through all the new stuff.

And what i thought would be a really exciting and fun experience turned out to be more of the birthday I had when I was little and all I got was an ugly sweater, back to school supplies and some kind of sports thing (it might have been a baseball glove). Anyways half of this stuff i unpacked is a waste of money and the other half I have no idea what to do with it.

So what is to follow this is a rant, because i somehow need vent my anger and frustration so I can move on from here and out how the hell I'm going to teach these kids how to be IB art students when they have horrible materials. And I mean no disrespect to the former art teacher, I'm sure this all made perfect sense to her, and she would have better equipped to teach these kids with this random assortment of stuff.

But honest who spends $100 on paint brush holders? 4 small paint brush holders! Paint Brush holders that where shipped to the Philippines from the States! Honestly, you're gonna waste my budget on that. Whats wrong with coffee can, hell I could have got someone to build me the same thing for a total of 5 dollars!

Another $100 spent on art posters.

I have 3 Boxes of clay and no kiln, and no its not the air dry kind.  Which means it will just mold and crumble.

I have 45 sets of puck paints. 45! And remember that the biggest class I have is 15 students. I have more sets of puck paints then I have students this semester! These sets have the 6 main colors, brown and black and there is no white.

I have boxes and boxes of these Styrofoam blocks, the kind of Styrofoam that you stick fake flowers into.  I can only assume that she got it to make sculptures with.  But I don't even know where to start with that, because as soon as you touch it little bits start to crumble off into you hand and I'm pretty sure if you try and paint it will disintegrate.

I have 6 stretched canvases, which is crazy because I have huge roles of canvas here, tones of stretchers and the maintenance men apparently stretch the canvas for us.

All I really wanted was some good paint, drawing paper, and some new drawing supplies, we're short charcoal and ink.

And I get it, I'm a paint snob, but why on earth would you order stuff all the way from the states if when all your going to get is tempera paint, which you can get here. And by the way adding gel medium and modeling paste to tempera does not make it acrylic. Which by the way the modeling paste showed up completely dried out!

Oh wait I forgot I one box of the worst, runniest acrylic paint I have ever seen in my life. Not to mention the fact that the colors suck. please note that when a paint is simply labeled "Brown" instead of giving what actual shade of brown it is, thats a bad sign. Not to mention that the amount of paint in there is no where close enough to last 4 high school classes a year.  If your going to ship paint from the States, get some good paint! Is it too much to ask to get some Burnt Sienna, or Yellow Ochre? Or maybe some Ultramarine Blue so the students could actually mix colors and they turn out right! Maybe some paint that could hold some texture?

Maybe instead of wasting money on posters and brush holders I could enough paper to get through a year, or a single class.

So frustrating.

This is the giant moth that lives outside my classroom, I think he's cool, my kids think I'm weird.

Bell???

So at our school there is no bell, no indication that period is over and that it is time to send students on their way. Instead it is up to the combined effort of both teacher and student to remember what time it is and to send the students away on time. This becomes difficult when your classroom clock is broken and permanently stuck at 12:40.

So today in my third period grade 12 IB art class we may have all got a little wrapped up in our figure drawing exercise and the kids may have been 10 minutes late getting to there next class. oooops...

But they did create some fun stuff...

Even I joined in (I had to give an example of how to do it)

Phone

This is my phone.

In the past I have had a phone with a full key pad. Now that I have to use the number buttons and T-9, I suck at texting.  Ok, lets be honest, I was never great at texting, I can't spell, words are an issue. But now this has taken it to a whole new level of me struggling for 5 minutes to send a simple message, and in the end it's incomprehensible. I like to think that it's partly because the phone is cheap and foreign, and doesn't full understand english.

Also my phones alarm is a robotic british woman yelling "IT IS [insert time here], IT IS TIME TO GET UP!"  This is on repeat until you turn it off. I miss the simple days of alarm sounds.

Class List?

So today we actually have school! No more rain days, for now that is...

Anyways this morning i was finally handed my class list so I could do attendance and know the actual number of students that there are in my class, who's supposed to be in my class. Or at least thats what I thought.

Turns out what I was given was a list of very student who is in each grade. Not so useful. So on the first day of class I still have no idea how many students I have showing up.

Oh Canada....

This morning when I checked my email there was a email from the Canadian Government. As a Canadian citizen who is registered living abroad in the Philippines they like to send me fun little updates and safety tips.

This email warned me that there is a Typhoon going on in Manila. Which is nice, but the Typhoon has already been going on since Monday, its now Wednesday. So they're a little late on the updates. The other piece of information was that if I was currently in an area of sever flood and require emergency assistance that there is a number to call.

Which is a comforting thought. Then I realized that if I was in an emergency flood disaster situation, I would be in at least 3 feet of water, with goal force winds. Which would mean that there would be no power. Which would mean there would be no internet. Which would mean that I would not get this email because it was sent 3 days into the Typhoon and extreme flooding had already taken place. And even if I did have a smart phone (which I currently do not) i would have probably already have dropped it into the flood, which would have rendered it useless and I would have no way of knowing the number to call.

Rainy Season

So as many of you are aware it is currently rainy season here in the Philippines. And unlike rainy season in some other regions of the world where at say 2pm it will start raining and then at 4pm it will stop, to the point where you can almost set your watch to it, here that's not the case. It rains whenever it feels like it and it can last for day of straight rain. Sometimes it stops and then theres sun for about 15 minutes and then it starts pouring again. However you can go several days with no rain. Its very unpredictable.

So you may or may not be aware that there is currently a Typhoon hitting Manila. A Typhoon is a hurricane, but on the Pacific. Here in Subic we are what you would consider a 2 hour drive from Manila, but because of traffic and roads, its more like 4 or 5. Either way we are a safe distance from the Typhoon, in that all we are experiencing is continuos heavy rains.

The school and where I live is where the American army base used to be (in an old officer's house, so mine's kinda fancy, by 1950's army standards). So say what you will about the army, but they knew what they were doing. The whole thing is built on top of a hill, there are canals and drainage systems that you wouldn't believe. So while the rest of the Philippines is under a foot of water we're good. Everything's wet and there's puddles everywhere, but there's no flooding. Except for my classroom...

Now the first day of school was suppose to be on Tuesday (which was yesterday, we're 12 hours a head of EST) however it was cancelled due to the heavy rains and the fact that many of the students and support staff live in lower areas so they were under a foot of water at the time. We had a rain day. Today the same thing happened. So now the first day of school has been pushed back twice.

The other thing you need to know is that when the built the school they correctly decided to build all of the school above ground, no basements. However when they decided to put the addition on for the art room someone forgot that they live in the philippines and thought it would be a good idea to build the art room into a hill, essentially it's a walk out basement.

Currently my art room is under about an inch of water. This is why you wear rubber boots.

New Toy!

So the other week I casually mentioned how its going to be a hassle to drag the projector up and down the stairs because my class is in the basement and many of us (teachers) share projectors. To my surprise this morning an IT guys shows up hold a band new project which is all mine!

Tomorrow I'm planning on casually mentioning that I would be a much more effective teacher with an iPad and see what happens..