Well, life is slowly returning to "normal". I survived my first exam week as a teacher and submitted my marks on Friday. A very good feeling! We have a bit of a crazy system here where if students fail a semester, they can just write an second exam, and if they pass, it replaces their failing mark. So, it means that after exams, we spend our time having after-school tutorials, and then writing new exams for students who failed. Now, I'm all about helping struggling students, but in almost all cases, the students who failed were just lazy, not confused about the material. It can be a bit frusturating, as it seems to encourage students to not do their work during the semester, knowing they can just pass a test at the end. Anyways, it is one of the many things I've had to get used to here and try to work around.

In other happier news, Dave and I started Spanish lessons this week, which is great! We have a super nice teacher, who lives really close to the school, so it works very well. We go once a week for an hour, which really isn't enough, but it's all we can fit in right now. Anyways, last week she gave us a test to see where we were at in terms of our Spanish, which of course, we bombed. Since most foreigners here are American, a lot of them have a basic knowledge of Spanish, as they learn some in school. Being Canadians, our exposure to Spanish has been limited to the menu at the Lonestar. Well, that's an exaggeration, but that's how it feels sometimes. We are definitely the beginners of all the beginners, but you have to start somewhere! After we bombed the test, she realized we should start at the beginning - so the Spanish alphabet it is! We're having fun learning it though, and we try to practise speaking to each other for an hour every night.

I'm also starting to get things worked out for our recruiting trip in February. I set dates this week with 4 Faculty of Eds, and I have another school confirmed to visit. I'm definitely excited about that, and trying to get a handle on things now, and not follow my general tendency to procrastinate!

Not sure if I wrote this in another post, but I am also helping with recruiting for the camp now. At the moment, we are looking for B.Ed. students interested in doing their Alt Prac here (the timing is specifically aimed at Queen's B.Ed.s but people from other schools are welcome!!) Anyways, so if you know anyone who might be interested, pass my email on to them.

Well, that's all from here! We miss everyone lots and can't wait to see some of you in Feb!