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Day 165 - 15 December 2005 Dia das diplomas! so this week was blah. either the kids were disappointed that they weren’t gonna learn more (nerds) or we bored out of their gourd doin the same exercises over & over. I made them practice the same exercises to drill the rules of excel into their head. hopefully it’ll pan out on the test I thought, and it did! 4 kids each received a ‘muito bom’ on their exam and three of these got nearly perfect class scores as well! SWEET! it was a pretty easy test that was very similar to the last exercise we did though. will definitely spend more time on Excel next course. or maybe have a course JUST on Excel and it’s wide range of capabilities. so today again made me look like a buffoon. I told the students the day before to come today to get their diplomas. little did I know how this process really worked, and nowhere to be seen is my director, so as I normally do, I prepared for it the best I could. I tried printing the diplomas in the computer room as the students were arriving, but at first I couldn’t get the printer to automatically install on the only computer that has the program I had created the diplomas with. so then I tried converting the diplomas to images and then printing them on the printer on the original computer it was hooked up to. but of course the printer was super low on magenta and the colors came out all messed up. so I told the students to stay and chill while I go print them nearby and return. so I go to the cyber café around the corner only to find that I can’t get any program to print the diplomas with the right orientation. 10 tries and half an hour later, I finally get it to print and I print all 7, coming to a total of almost 500 CVE! WHOA color printing is crazy expensive! whatever, I run back to the youth center and still no director. brilliant! so I talk to the secretary to see if he’ll return today and she says she doesn’t think so, and I ask when she thinks I can give out diplomas and she says that he will have to talk to the students about something first before they can get their diplomas. I’m guessing it’s the payment for the class that he’s lookin for. how sad. after all that work and stressing, I couldn’t even give them out that day. what a tool I am. so I go back to the class and apologize cuz I can’t give them out before the director signs them. good thing I brought drops (the generic term for candy) to give out! so I give each student a li’l baggie of drops and tell them they can hang out and play around on the computers if they want and that they’ll have to return next week for their diplomas. of course I have no idea when I’ll see the director next and what he wants to do when with the students or even about what he needs to talk to them about. so again, I’m left confused and feelin like a dumbarse in front of my students. yay. but in other news, I got to talk to one of my buddies from training who’s workin in a site that I want to be in. she gives me a heads up on what it’s like there and what she goes through. it’s always interesting to hear what other folks are doing and what is wearing on them. there are so many differences between some of the sites in this country. and of course it was nice to talk to her for the first time in 3 months. I should really call some of the other folks around the country, especially since not many are callin me. wonder when I’ll get to see some of my training buddies next... <--- EXCEL-ing ‘n Sanpadjudu                5 days of solitude --->