Brilliant!

Today was my first day of school, and it went splendidly. It rained all morning, but then it was sunny all afternoon. I have already begun to think with a British accent, and I love how they all use so casually the words brilliant, well done, posh, marks (points), and maths. And, they say my name without the r (Kahla), while the Ecuadorians say the r rolled! Anyway, I spent the day receiving paper after paper concerning the British National curriculum and the IB diploma programme. I must say that I love how each and every year of students learns a bit of Biology, as well a bit of physics and chemistry. Instead of just learning Biology in grades 7 and 10 (or 9 in WI), and then having the other years to forget it all, students here learn more and more advanced concepts each year. This system does, however, make it terribly difficult for me to figure out when they are supposed to have learned which material, because I have no experience on which to rely. What we agreed upon today is that I will take over the classes for Years 7, 8, 9, 10, and 12, while John will retain Year 11 and Year 13. While I will have to spend a considerable amount of time preparing for 5 distinct courses, I will spend just a fraction of the time I would in the states on learning names. The class sizes are as follows: Year 7 has 15, Y8 has 16, Y9 has14, Y10 has 14, and Y12 has 10, for a total of 81 (I would easily have 120 in the states). However, I don't see all years each day, so I think I'll manage just fine.

In other news (potentially more exciting than curriculum) is the cafeteria food! Seriously, it's gourmet! Today I had a palm heart salad, rice, chicken in cilantro-mint sauce, a vegetarian dough-covered egg-shaped thing, and papaya juice. I turned down the Colombian beef stew, but it looked pretty good, too. The beauty is that each school lunch only costs $1.50! What's also great is that there are virtually zero behavior problems in the classes. Though wealthy, the students don't have attitudes regarding their elevated status and power, but genuinely seem to appreciate their education. And where, in U.S. public schools, much of the classtime involves crowd control, Joh only had to quiet down two boys three different times today during 80 minutes of class, and they're in Year 7! (=12 yrs old and very immature!)

So, after school, I intended to postpone my stack of readings for a nice hike up the mountain. There's a clear trail and, though the top looks close, it takes over 4 hours to arrive at the top because we can't actually see the peak from here! I was just going to go an hour or so, but I never coud find the trail entrance! I circled my subdivision twice, walked down this little path that ended up leading to a compost pile and three of the biggest spiders I've ever seen, and then I gave up and read in the hammock until I got cold (achachay!). It turns out you have to leave the subdivision and follow the main road around, even though it looks straight ahead! In other bad news, I saw a spider and two little bugs in my room last night (which I promptly killed with my imported flyswatter), and I showered this morning with a creepy black spider on the curtain. Not the way I like to start my sleep nor my morning, but I still think cockroaches would be worse.

Last, but not least, my new and most-frequently used vocab word: golosa = sweet-toothed. How did I never learn this one before?!