First Day Back at School

We’d spent a few days getting ready, lesson planning, etc. and we were ready to start school gungho again! So we arrived at school Monday morning ready to teach the teachers…but only one of them showed up. Sister Pascuela was there ready to learn… except that she also wanted to help prepare for Sister Teresina’s surprise birthday party (Sr. Teresina is the university principal). So instead of teaching as we had prepared, we hung out waiting for the surprise party, happy that we have our lesson planned for next week.

But because we’re still figuring out the schedule and the fact that things around here never go quite as planned, the day was still a little crazy. Circumstances caused problems with pulling off the surprise birthday party. Sister Teresina left the school because there had been a mouse (a real mouse, not a computer mouse) in her printer and she needed the printer fixed ASAP. So we waited until she got back and then all crowded into the room. When she appeared we all sang Happy Birthday to her in English.

There were lots of people – other Sisters, teachers and students from the university, and us. Sister Teresina cut the cake and started the food line and stayed for awhile, but then she got a few cell phone calls and left. So the rest of us continued hanging out and eating food. It was a funny situation because she missed about half of her surprise party, but she’s a busy woman. And besides staying busy running the university, she told us later that she’s really uncomfortable with attention being on her. It was surprising because she’s one of the best English speakers we know here and seems very comfortable with people from all over. She’s also very smart and hardworking. So to see a shy side of our boss at the university was kind of funny.
That afternoon she even gave us her birthday presents. The Sisters had given her a box of “hairy fruit,” one of her favorite fruits that I think look like alien spores. I’d never seen anything like them! They are green and red and yellow with curled spikes all over them. You dig your thumb through the skin and it falls apart easily. Inside is a whitish oval with a hard seed in the middle. So you eat the whitish oval part. It tastes pretty good, but it’s still weird. Anyway, we went to talk to her and she gave us the box and refused to take them back. We tried probably 10 times… All I can think is that the Sisters understand more than most people I’ve ever met that the greatest thing is giving, not receiving. That could explain their joy. Or they could have been trying to get rid of the alien spores ; )

Also during the day, the senior high school was having their Christmas party and with that a dance…if you could call it a dance. It was cute because there were many students crowded around the dance floor (an open corner of the school building), but everyone was too shy to go out. Berta, our friend who is the student body president, tried valiantly to get people to go out, but they would leave quickly.

Brendan and I were watching and decided to liven it up : ) I jumped out there with Berta and she taught me an East Timorese dance that’s kind of like a line dance with different moves. Then the song ended. A little later there was a slow dance and Brendan and I hit the floor with probably six or seven other couples. But everyone else was doing a close slow dance, so we showed off with some swing dancing and twirls and spins. We got claps and cheers because it was like nothing they’d seen before. And in a last effort I taught six girls the dance to Cotton-Eyed Joe and we stormed the floor doing the dance and spins to a Timorese song. It was great!
We’re not sure what happened to the dance after that because Sister Ervinia (our boss at the senior high school) called us over for the teachers’ Christmas lunch. The Sisters had prepared rice and chilis and chicken. It was nice because we only had cold rice for lunch in our lunch boxes to eat otherwise. We got to meet some more of the high school teachers and got some compliments on our dancing from a teacher who had spied us out on the dance floor. And after the talk they pulled out a “pudding” which is basically Spanish flan. It was delicious! And Sister Ervi said that she’d teach us how to make it if we wanted. Hopefully that will happen, mostly if we make time for it. Then when we come home all of you can benefit from our new skills : )

Before we headed home we made an announcement about the English Club that we’ll be starting after they finish their exams next week. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons right after school we’ll be teaching an English Club which will be like the English classes except more fun because we’re working on finding family movies to show in English and working out field trips to take them on to practice English. It should be great and provide a good opportunity to develop closer relationships than in the university classes.

The cool part about this is that we’re not just teaching English, which is very helpful for the young people. We get to work God into everything – starting classes with different prayers, sharing good songs with them, using Bible verses for dictation material. It’s everything that people need – Christ + human promotion of education and basic needs.

It’s nice to feel like we’re starting to get the hang of things so we can make a difference. There are always highs and lows, but we seem to be on the upswing most of the time. We’ve been for one month officially yesterday (January 7th). Wow, it’s gone fast! It’s challenging, but it’s good work with good people so what’s not to like?

So back to the day, we finally headed home. We hadn’t taught at all, but it was a successful day of connecting with people. K, talk to you soon!

Love always,
Rachel and Brendan