We sit in our cottage most evenings, glad people can’t see us, and wonder who’s idea it was to let us out of our cages let alone out of the country and into children’s lives. Monday afternoon we’re in the staff room when one of the teachers in the school starts talking to us about the marijuana industry in British Columbia. We thought the topic was a little random but went with it anyway. We had a great chat about how some doctors here indorse it and whether or not marijuana use should be legalized. It wasn’t until a couple days later when Holly and I were discussing the conversation at our cottage that we wondered if maybe she thought we were on drugs and that’s why she brought it up. We’re not, we swear, this is normal.
Tuesday started off like any normal day until the principal calls us over. He looks so grim that we got worried that something serious has happened. Turns out the English teacher, whose year 9 and 10 classes we’ve taken over, is out sick today. He was all worried for us and wondering if we wanted someone else with us when we’re teaching or what he should do. We tell him we’re fine and if he feels like he should have someone check on us they can but otherwise don’t worry. We’ve fully taken on the laid back Kiwi attitude. So we’re supposed to teach the classes we normally do and the other teachers would cover her other classes. That is until first period when the English class ends up with no teacher. I’m in science but it’s Holly’s prep period so she jumps in to save the day by telling them stories of the Pauly D lookalike we saw in Auckland and about how different some of the words are between Kiwi’s and Canadians. After the period is over, we ask the secretary if they would like us to take over all of Sue’s classes today. Well, that seemed to be the best thing they’ve heard, we were officially heroes. So now you have Holly and I teaching classes where we know absolutely nothing about what’s happening in any of them. We should have apologized for ruining them in advance.
We get into the year 12-13 English class and they get a bit of work done but not nearly the amount that we should have gotten them to do. Instead I finally learned some of the rules of cricket, although they didn’t understand it completely instead either. At this point I’m not sure if the cricket players even know what’s going on. We move on to the years 11-12-13 general period. They get a bit more work done but then get into talks about the different kinds of bowling and going to visit the zoo and although it may seem as though they are telling you that you can do both things together, they really mean you can do them one after the other. There is no bowling at the zoo, we made sure to clarify that. From there it turns into a bit of a dance party. We didn’t mind so much as they did get some work done and there was only 5 minutes left of class. We got to see some robot, puzzling and a bit of popping. I made them promise to teach me some of that later and sure enough at the end of the day, I learned me some puzzling. It took him showing me about 15 times in order to get one simple box but I can totally get back to the bridge now. As I was told, I’m the next generation of puzzlers, bam bam bam badda boom.
This was the last week for Waka Ama so we decided we had to go and get some pictures and whatnot, plus it’s crazy fun and we wanted to do it again. The students had my camera for most of the day and Waka Ama was no different, they take some pretty good pictures. They even managed to get me tripping in the mud and Holly’s muscles as she helped push out the canoe. As the students said, it was great water for stingrays. This is their way of saying how nice the water is and succeeding at making Holly paranoid as she was helping push out the canoe at this point. I was in the other canoe and every time I was standing in the water they would cry black shadow. I finally told them they needed to stop making jokes about the stingrays or else they would be carrying me back to shore. That is when they showed me the water spider and I nearly jumped out of my skin. Good to see we can get through to them. Apparently my reaction was sufficient to what they were looking for and now I fully expect for Holly and I to have to watch our back for bugs and spiders brought to us by the students for the rest of our time here.
We met up with some teachers Friday evening to check out the scene in the hopping town of Coromandel. They had a DJ at one of the pubs, it was a big night. We met a lot of former students, relatives of the teachers and Holly’s dream came true when we met, Mrs. Connor’s Mom. Sure enough, the first thing Holly says to her is, “I’m going to steal your dog.” My first thought is, great, now she’ll also think we’re nuts but she surprised me by replying, “You can have him. He stinks!” So now that we’ve worked that out, we’re going to go pick up the dog just before we leave. Or maybe we’ll just keep him here until we come back...
To Be Continued...
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