Stepping Out of the Boat

At 7:45 every morning, all the homeroom teachers bring their classes down to the gym/auditorium/recess area/soccer field/basketball court/cafeteria/parking lot (after school hours) of the school for the Flag Raising Ceremony.

Each class stands in a line and the Dominican national anthem is played to begin the day. On US holidays, they play the Star Spangled Banner, too. For example, Monday was Labor Day, so we had the pleasure of standing through two national anthems. Then, everyone must bow their heads for the morning prayer, which isn't a problem here because almost all of our student are Catholic, and it's a private school. Most of the time a 2nd grader says the morning prayer and no one can understand what is being said because of the poor microphone quality.


Then, it's time for morning announcements. Unfortunately, it's impossible to understand what a word anyone is saying, so I just hope nothing important is ever said during the morning announcements. The homeroom teachers also take attendance and do the uniform check during the Flag Ceremony.

The uniforms generally consist of green pants or a skirt for the ladies, a white polo shirt with the St. Michael's logo, white ankle socks and black flat dress shoes. I have decided that the uniform battle is not one that I am going to fight, so if I see an untucked shirt, I'll simply look the other way.

Tomorrow, John and I both are attending a mini-conference from 11:00 to 12:30 at school to learn how to use the new textbooks which have still not arrived. We most definitely see the irony in all of this. So - during that time, we have to have substitutes, and the directions for sub plans were, "Leave your planbook on your desk or in your cabinet." Since I (Claire) have neither a desk nor a cabinet, I think I may just let the sub have a hayday.

Not really. I'll type something up and try to give it to someone tomorrow and hope for the best, but really, the way things go here, I shouldn't expect my substitute to see hide nor hair of my plans.

We do not currently have any plans for the weekend, but we did decide that all the foreign teachers and anyone else who wants to come are taking a weekend trip to a place called Juan Dolio not too far from here. We're going to an all-inclusive resort for the weekend. Hoorahh! That's two weekend getaways in a row for us.

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