First Day of School

So, yesterday was my first day of school, and it went pretty well. I was shown around, and introduced to everyone. It was really good. As you can see in these pictures the school is well-furnished and very modern;

My fellow teachers are very friendly, although all the other native speakers are American, so I had to defend my language by explaining that pants are worn on the INSIDE.
It's fun, and I enjoy the office banter. The Indonesian teachers are also cool, as are the secretaries.

I was shown the computer system I will be using, the organisation of classes and where things are kept. Then I went to observe a lesson...

That was a shock, it was a class of 14 children, all under the age of 6, and there was a clear divide - the girls sat on one side of the room and were very studious, and the boys sat (well, occasionally sat) on the other; fighting, shouting, doing cartwheels and generally going crazy. The teacher, Joko, was good, but it seemed a very difficult task to get the students who wanted to work to learn a few things. I was very glad after the lesson when I was told that non-Indonesians rarely teach those classes.

Next I was supposed to observe Steve teach a teenage class, but because of a mix-up with the schedules, I ended up teaching my first lesson, with no preparation. It went really well, the group was advanced in their English, mostly adults and friendly. We did all the set work for the lesson and then I made them laugh by doing a few accents, so it went well.

Afterwards, I observed another teacher, Robert, teaching teenagers, which was a good class, towards the end of the lesson they played the whisper game (I think it's safer not to refer to it as 'Chinese Whispers' here), but one girl in the class (who was Chinese, behind the others in English, and didn't speak Indonesian) didn't want to play, so I got her to teach me some Chinese and practice her English.

That was the end of the day, so we went home, had dinner and went to bed. Oh, and I worked out how to eat dragon fruit;

It was delicious, had the texture of a kiwi fruit, and the taste was a mix of strawberry and raspberry.

Now, it's my second day, I'm going to be teaching two classes - one I will be watching a movie (easy!) and the other is a conversation class. It should be fun!