Day 125: Meet the kiddos

Good photos and funny stories makes for an ok day.

Last night my host sister and I followed our inebriated mother to the town...dancehall? Bar? Regardless. Probably one of the more awkward experiences in my long, noble history of awkwarditude. I, uh, did not fit in with the locals. It was an extremely...cultural experience. I did, however, collect the following excellent quotes, which came from the same person, within the space of about 5 minutes, without any input whatsoever from me:

"Wow! You're so tall I thought you were a man."
"Today, you are beautiful."
"Really, you are wonderful now."

It's an interesting implication - a total stranger determining that today, and only today, I'm pretty awesome, although man-like in proportion.

Today (Saturday) the school was open for students to come in and make Christmas decorations. Christmas stuff starts exactly on December 1st around here (instead of like, October). I went to take photos of the proceedings.

Janu and Duka and I going to school:



I give you...the notorious 5th grade!

Oh yah, that looks real safe, Emil:



Ruth? Smiling? At me?



Neils and Jonas, fairly admirable young men (Neils is my...ehh...cousin, I think):



Ingrid and Ruth making art:



The 4th grade is next. I don't actually know any of their names because I've never had to work with them.

Uh, nice shirt, kid.



Probably trouble:



Rabbit ears and attempts to be "gangsta", truly the universal sign language:



8th! Here we have Mikkel and Sebastian, fine gentlemen who only hit each other occasionally:



10/11th! Minike is quite intelligent when he decides to be:



It's pretty difficult to do the whole Christmas tree thing in a land with practically no vegetation, so the major holiday decoration is a big star in the window:



Ah yes, sex-ed at its finest:



(Although I still need to ask what it actually says.)

The other big Christmas thing is to light a large candle for a little bit each day, which burns past the numbers 1-24 counting down to Christmas. Forget fire safety, we've got one of these in every room of the school:



I believe this is a 9th grader, who has a name I can neither pronouce nor spell:



A view of the 8th grade classroom, where I probably do the greatest percentage of my teaching time:



Trouble from the 5th grade looking in on what I think is the 7th grade:



Starrrrr:



The school library/computer lounge:



Moving back to the younger grades, 3rd and below.

Oh yah, I totally did this awesome photo on purpose:



Teeth. Lots of teeth coming in, this age:



There's a pretty good chance he's trying to touch my lens:



Other than being an excellent photo, the following reminds me of something a friend said. This friend (my age) had never been on a airplane before, and asked how many times I had flown. I said something like, "psh, more than I can count" and he was like "more than TEN?!"



Lovely work:



Back to the 5th grade...this is Mannus:



And this is Mannus' vaguely terrifying orange martian santa:



A nice girl:



I like this one:



Apparently it snows here:



And its also really windy, producing this:



This means me trying to get to school either involves falling down on that rocky ice pack or floundering through 5 ft of snow.

"Pleeaaaase can I come in?":



(Christ, I probably shouldn't even joke about that.)

WARP-SPEED!:



A star in a neighbor's window:



It is ridiculously windy at the moment. My room is on the north side (towards the oncoming wind) and sometimes I can actually feel the wall shake a bit. Lot's o' snow.