I miss talking about the weather …

The heat here is unreal and I’m hoping that both the kids and I will be able to escape the humidity induced stupor when it cools down. Jesus let it cool down. September 1st yesterday and it was the hottest day of the year so far. I’m actually dying here – it was cooler for about a week about a week ago. During that week my air conditioning broke – normally an occasion for a full scale meltdown (physical and emotional) but it was cool enough outside so I thought it was just not working cause of the outside temperature. I slept with the door open to compensate. Then the killer heat returned and Sam (yes I have named my air conditioner because I love him, you call the ones you love by their name even if they’re an inanimate object) was still dead – he was giving me air but it wasn’t cool even though I had the damn thing set at 16 degrees (I also never appreciated until I got here that a room that is 25 degrees is actually quite cool). Eventually my supervisor came over to save me – ie to see if it was really broken before he called in the experts.

Good thing he did because it turns out that it wasn’t. My illiterate self had simply managed to switch it onto the heating setting. Poor Sam was trying to heat my room to 16 degrees when it was already 34. I hate being illiterate. Oh and by the way I can’t read. I can’t write. I’ve learned one of the (many) alphabets so I can sound out the words that come between the Kanji (the most difficult alphabet of them all – Chinese characters with Japanese meanings which shift depending on the context). The library, normally my saviour is a menacing place where I huddle beside the small collection of English language books and think of the Long Room, Hodges Figgis and the National Library (in fairness my thoughts probably shouldn’t turn to the Long Room since I can’t read latin either but it is pretty so…)

The best days of your life…

That’s what the American films try to tell us anyway – yes its school. I’m in a Junior High which is the first three second level grades – from ages 11/12 – 13/14. I’ve only taught the lethargic 3rd graders so far but I can’t help but be amazed by how defined as stereotypes they are. There are the cool kids, the popular (pretty) girls, the good athletes, the geeks, the wannabe cool kid hangers-on and the outcasts. And I can tell who is who by simply looking at them – I don’t even need to understand what the hell they say to each other. It’s made me step back and reconsider all those American high school films – I always thought they exaggerated and caricatured the stereotypes but I’m now thinking that they may just be spot on – here at least.