Schedules and routines are fluid in Kosovo, so we have learned to be very flexible. Last Friday, there was a teacher absent and they do not get subs very often. Instead, they rearrange the schedules, so that there are no last-hour classes, for those students whose teacher was gone. Teachers who are at school will teach through a break to fill in the schedule. For Gazmend and I, we can split up and take two classes at once. We did that on Friday and I had the eleventh-graders by myself for one of their 40-minute classes. These students were great and I enjoyed every minute of the class.
Because of schedule changes, we got done a half-hour early. Gazmend was subbing at the gymnasium for an English teacher in the afternoon and he invited me to join him. (It seems at the gymnasium, they do schedule subs, but this is possibly because it was a planned absence.) I could only go from 2 pm to 3:30 pm as Shpresim was already planning to come to Kaçanik for language lessons. Mine started at 4 pm. So after finishing up at the vocational school, I hurried home for lunch and then went to the gymnasium.
These two classes that I was there for, were both 12th-grade classes and in the first group, we used the class time to talk. The students asked questions and the conversation was always really good. They were slow to get into it and so I did the awful drawing of the United States on the board and we had students list cities and states that they knew. After that, they warmed up and started asking questions.
The second group were students I had met last May and June when my counterpart was subbing for a teacher on medical leave. This group remembered me and I remembered them. I am still struggling to remember names, but I remember so many things that we had talked about in class before. I remembered which student liked traditional dancing, the one who liked to sing, and the boy who did not like to read and did not textbooks. I was impressed with the improvement in many of the students speaking skills over just I few months. I think they were just more comfortable and more confident speaking with me. The time in the classes went very fast.
This week is a super, easy week, as the 12th-graders in both schools went on a senior trip to Albania. Because the head teachers for the 12th-graders must travel with the group, there are not enough teachers available to hold school, so I am off for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. My counterpart was out of town on Tuesday, so I taught the 6-classes by myself. Some classes went really well and others did not, but it was a good learning experience.
Because I did not have class on Wednesday, I went with Thom and Sami to Gjilan in the afternoon. Sami had some work there that Thom was not involved in, so we walked around Gjilan for two hours. We explored part of Gjilan we did not see on previous visits. We stopped at several secondhand stores and I got a pair of warm leggings and a new pair of shoes for school. I think they will be good for walking to school as they have good treads on the soles, and yet they are dressier than my other walking shoes. I am worried that I will wear out my favorite black low boots that I wear all the time, now that the weather is cooler. It was nice to get away for the afternoon and the weather was beautiful for walking.
On the way back from Gjilan, we stopped to get some pumpkins (squash). Sami helped me pick a pumpkin for making pie and another that can be roasted or made into soup. There will be a post about the results of my "Pumpkin Thursday" soon.
Additional pictures from the week
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