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..