I should probably be a little more embarrassed about the fact we will illegally sneak across borders and time zones to acquire cheese, but I'm oddly proud of our Dedication To Dairy.
So we're in Apoera, an Amerindian village in Suriname a couple of hours' boat ride from Orealla. Whenever we tell people we plan to go, they shake their heads in a manner that suggests collusion between us to warn us, not unkindly, that "The Surinamese are backward, miss. They hang their washing on their verandas and the mud there is red." We nod sagely, staring impassively at the red mud all around us and making a mental note to take our clothes down from our veranda when we get back.
We're here to (attempt to, for we oft get distracted by the cheese) organise travelling for July. We had grand plans to explore swathes of South America, then remembered we're piss poor. We've therefore reassessed and decided to fly to St. Lucia and Barbados, after spending a week or so in the Backward Capital of the World: Paramaribo (capital of Suriname). It's a tough life, eh? Unfortunately, we really don't have the money to do anything exciting once we GET to these incredible places, so we'll most likely ruminate on a beach for a month before returning to the UK and pretending we did stuff.
Life is much the same in Orealla as it was last post. Teaching has stepped up a gear, thankfully - another teacher recently went on leave, so I inherited her class by default. It's the remedial class again (although this remedial class can write, refreshingly!), and I'm now well on my way to having twenty-or-so more minions. I've achieved this by, primarily, being a bit of a bitch to them. I'm still refusing to whip them, and always will, but parading round HOLDING a whip seems different? (Probably not). I also hold them back with me over breaks/lunches if they have refused to work during the lesson, which no other teacher does. This does lead to them grumpily informing me that I'm "a mean Miss", but I find it difficult to be moved by this when they tell me so whilst sitting in their own seats and finishing their work, and students from all other classes run up and down the corridor or drift into one another's classrooms throughout their lessons. The lack of stationery problem is still at an all-time high, though: about ten minutes into an early lesson I noticed no one was doing that "writing" thing. I stopped gesturing at my exquisite CFC diagram and frowned.
"Why aren't you writing, Anoeska?"
"No pen, Miss."
"What about you, Brinsley?"
"Need a next pen, Miss. Pen crank out."
"OK, put your hands up if you're sitting there doing nothing because you don't have anything to write with."
At this point there was a pause (supplemented with a questioning sweep of my eyes over the room by me), then about 3/4 of the hands tentatively went up. At the beginning of the year I lent my pens/pencils/rulers/erasers/razor blades out to every imploring and grasping hand, but given that the contents of my pencil case have been gradually whittled down to one pen (it's black. In Orealla all official documents are done in blue ink, so I'm not allowed to touch anything), I've had to stop doing that and now simply make my lessons SUPER INTERACTIVE!!!!!1
Oh, update. We can't afford to go to Paramaribo, and, hastily and recklessly making the decision to sacrifice eating and sight-seeing, we've booked St. Lucia and Barbados for two weeks each. I've now run out of time on the computer so much dash. I promise at SOME point I will write something of a decent length that actually fills you in on what I've been doing.
Much love to all. Hope it's not too cold over there. It's rainy season here now so we're all shivering in the 30 degree temperatures. Ha :)
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