Quisqueya Teacher/Life in Haiti Orientation: Day 1

Today officially began work! It feels good to start my day with more of a purpose instead of aimless wandering around the school. We started orientation with coffee, pastries, and introductions. It was so fun to hear everyone’s stories from around the room. When I was telling people back in the U.S. what I was going to be doing I got some weird looks, because it isn’t “normal.” Here, it’s normal. People who have been here for 3 years, 7 years, 13 years, 25 years!

We did the regular old orientation thing: talked about goals for the year, handbook kind of stuff, blah blah. We tried to watch a video but the sound didn’t work so we got a little extra time to work in our rooms. I finally got to see which room I have and yay! It’s so big! All the furniture was piled in the middle of the room under dust and more dust. But, after two hours of sweating, sneezing, and way more sweating I got all of the furniture where I wanted it and did some minor (very very minor) decorating. It’s not 100% ready to go, but it is close. Way easier than last year where I was scrambling to decorate my 3^rd grade classroom in cute polka dots and signs and posters and borders and bulletin boards, etc. I have two dry erase boards but no bulletin boards. If I want to hang something on the wall, I was told the best way to do that is to superglue it…hmmmm. Not sure that would fly at my old school J

We ate lunch at the school and then elementary and secondary split into two different meetings to cover more general information. A lot of questions I didn’t even know I had were answered.

This afternoon I went running around the school again with another new teacher, Jill. Later I attempted to cook spaghetti noodles and some chicken (confession: I had to google how to use a gas stove because I was scared of blowing up the entire house). I had to borrow matches from my neighbors and when I went to return them they told me to bring my food and eat over with them. We had about 6 people total eating together, talking, laughing, discussing the day. This is a good time to say that I love LOVE where I am living. It is so great to be a 90 second walk from my classroom, 10 second walk from my “gym”, and about a 5 second walk from my neighbors.

Orientation day 2 tomorrow!

P.S. I will take pictures of my classroom when it is fully ready for little minds to learn it...we aren't quite there yet.