First day of school...first day of school!

So, the finding nemo quote is in my head! haha Nemo was very excited to go to school, and so was I! Today was my first day at Nomentana, and it was a good one! The day went by very fast. Where I am staying is only a 10 minute walk from the school, so that is great! I walked this morning with my host mother, because she is a teacher at the school, and I finally got to meet my cooperating teacher, Jo! She is very nice and also very young. She is tiny, likes to run marathons, and loves to go tanning in the sun on the beach!

She got me acquanted and showed me around the school. The building the school is in was not meant for a school, so many classrooms are very small. It seems to have worked out all right though. There are only 10 children in my class! I kept looking for more of them to come :) The morning went quickly, but I already noticed some differences. When writing the topic for the journals they wrote "Walt" which must mean topic or subject. I am not sure! They also always say the phrase, "let's have a go at it" or "off you go." It will take some getting used to. I am sure there will be plenty of times where I say something that all of them will be like "hmmm" Ha!

All the kids are very cute and they all have accents. They are from all over, really. I as expecting most of them to be Britsh, but that does not seem to be the case. In my class I have kids from Spain, Italy, Sweeden, Holland, Britain, the U.S. and Ireland. They have a lot of energy, but seem well-behaved. Over the break, some of them did not speak any English at all, so we could tell it was harder for them to get back into the groove of things.

What I have noticed here is that everyone is always drinking tea or coffee. Like this was what it was like today: I got up for breakfast and Noreen asked if I wanted coffee or tea. I said no, because I just had coffee after dinner last night! Then we walked 10 min to school and Jo was like "Do you want coffee or tea?" and I said no thank you. Then, they have a break at 10:20 AM for twenty minutes so they can go have tea or coffee. At least three other people in the staff room asked me if I wanted some. Then we had lunch only an hour and a half later, and after lunch guess what? You got it. "Do you want tea or coffee?" Then, I got home after school about 4:30 and Noreen asked if I wanted tea or coffee. What is it with these people!? And like I said, I also have had it after dinner. Good lord!

Today I watched a literacy lesson and a beginner's Italian lesson. I told the Italian teacher that I needed to be a student in her class. She is going to look for worksheets for me so that I can practice! They were learning about clothes today. There were two children from the U.S. and they seemed to struggle the most! It figures; the Europeans, that never learned Italian, were better off because they had at least some background with other languages.

In the afternoon, we had a break for lunch. They get an hour and 15 minutes for lunch, which is long! I am used to eating in about 25 minutes! Also, it is very nice because all of the teachers get free lunch, so that will save me some money! Today there was pesto pasta, salad, and broccli.

In the afternoon, I did a "getting to know you activity" which the kids liked. I had them do their "quality world." In the circle, or their world, they drew things that they like, and outside of the circle they drew things that they did not like. I got to know more about them and I am going to hang them up in the classroom. I also did one for myself and they were very interested in looking at it. They are also getting very confused when I say football, because in their head, that is soccer! At the end of the day, they had 5 minutes and they actually played a familiar game- heads up, 7 up! However, they call it heads up, thumbs up.

On Mondays, there are staff meetings, so the head master introduced me to everyone. I had met most of the teachers already though throughout the day. The school staff is small- only about one or two teachers per grade level.

All in all it was a good, but overwhelming day. It will get better and I will get to know the rules and ways of doing things!

Thanks for reading :)

Ciao for now.

xoxo Katie