The First Week

I am currently sitting in the bar only 50ft from my house on a Saturday evening. This is mainly due to the fact that I do not have internet at school or the apartment right now, but the beer does taste good despite the hangover I had this morning (Spent 8 hrs at the bar, got drunk, gave a lot of high fives and threatened to kill the ex boyfriend of a teacher).

The first day of school was a lot quieter than the hell of a day I had last year, but it was obvious from the start that no one knew what they were doing. It is common for most schools to have schedules ready for students before they come to school, for teachers to have lists of who is in their classes, and for students to report to their classes during the first week of school.

Well, that didn't happen, so instead the students were herded around by advisory (homeroom), often having the same teacher for more than one period a day. The school is too small and we all have to share rooms, however some classes were double booked.

This was quite the challenge since I had to come up with generic activities that were captivating but not related to my class since many of the students that I had would not be in my classroom.

Still, chin up cheer up. My positivity was already waning in the face of a panic that told me that returning was a mistake, but I had a good week overall, woke up at five ready to rock.

Had some very interesting staff meetings with many people screaming about the most minute details. The most interesting meeting through came when we had to evacuate the school because of an out of control helicopter. I didn't quite understand the logic of being safer by leaving the building, but it was pretty funny to see 50 teachers crossing the street.

The helicopter did not crash into the school. I have mixed feelings about that.

First day of school was also our first soccer game. I was a nervous wreck. We drive a converted half bus (the coaches drive it) with kids crammed in seats and on the floor. We were all very excited, the players have been making a lot of progress in practice.

Which was why I was heartbroken when we lost our first game 8-2. Granted we were playing a school 5 times larger than ours in a top division. I wouldn't let them mercy us, and then I made out guys play their JV team later, who they beat 2-0. The players were exhausted after playing two games in a row but I figured we had a ways to go.

Had our second game and first league game on Thursday. We went to field and discovered that it had not been painted. Had to run back to the school and grab a ladder, wire, wire cutters, soccer nets, team eligibility roster, pictures, duct tape and of course spray paint with only 30 min to game time, while the other coach shuttled students to Washington Park. Had a student spray paint the field, he did a remarkable job until he decided to tag midfield which I probably should have seen coming. I kept having visions of a half pint of Jameson.

We won 2-0. 1-0 in the league.