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Day 320 - 18 May 2006 jr. slump my third class starts the day after my bday when 7 students show, one of them being the girlfriend of one of my homies (and she’s pregnant). all seems usual: the uncomfortable silence as I stumble my thru an introduction of myself and to the course followed by multitudes of blank stares and quizzical glances. after a week or so, some still can’t understand a thing I’m sayin and ask me to speak Português…riiiiiight, like I wanna conjugate and speak all nasally…good try lady. maybe try listenin harder instead of goofin off on the computer, huh? anyhoo~ so forget the curse of the sophomore slump (that was my best class), it’s all about the jr. slump! these folks don’t understand me, I don’t understand them, and they’re overall more advanced than all the students I’ve had before sans the one chica who has absolutely no experience on a computer. well, that does make for an interesting challenge. I have her come in a half hour earlier the first week or two, but then she starts missin class without telling me she’s disappearing for a week at a time, so as you can guess, my effort to give her extra help collapses, and that’s the way the cookie crumbles… so I think that integrating a typing program into lessons is a good idea until I notice the one of the ladies have no patience with the program and begins smashin all the keys on the keyboard at once to type instead of using the prescribed method of touch typing. AIYAH! eventually too I notice that folks are not doing their assigned typing practice and are just lookin around through the computer and goofin off. this leads to my frustration and lack of care, and I just stop tryin after a while. after all, it IS nearly summer and most of these kids have senioritis. so do i? eventually my homie’s girl disappears one day and her friend in the class (who also disappears a week or two later to study for upcoming exams) tells me that she’s up north in the hospital givin birth to a 6 month old premature baby. g’lord! 3 months early is quite the jump, especially for the constantly late life of Cape Verde. after fika’n (staying) up in the hospital for a few weeks, both mommy and baby return safely and are healthy. thank goodness! of course I find this out thru the grapevine as mommy never returns to my classroom. of the 3 women who made up half of my class, only 1 remained and stayed to finish the course. eventually I had a class of 5, of which 3 were graduating seniors who disappeared (warning me beforehand at least) during the week of national standardized testing. it was good to see them actually return after the other two disappeared, and then of course to see them graduate from high school a month later. needless to say, it’s been a rough term for me and my patience. I guess the good thing was that the course finally came to a point where everybody was learning something (Excel) and I felt like I could give them something to challenge them and make them earn those diplomas. so I guess I’m not a total failure as I felt I was the first 6 weeks of the course. yay for summer and Festa do São João right around the corner! <--- bday chillaxin                sao joao ja ben --->