One thing and another meant it’s taken a while to persuade the juggernaut into motion post-UK trip, but most of the things we´re involved in seem now to be moving in the right sort of direction.
I’ve reconnected with my little mate from the village who seems to be doing just fine, and together with school we´re working with mum to enable her to leave him at school without her for a couple of hours while I take her off to visit one of her siblings in the city. We had the first go at that on Monday and it seemed to work out OK, so hopefully we´re good for a repeat again this week.
The special school are still working on their idea to pay me for a few hours a week, except they haven’t any money (minor hitch), so they´re trying to persuade the provincial government ministry of something-or-another to take me on as an “auxiliary”. The social worker seems to be fairly optimistic that we can pull this off, and she seems to be fairly sane (for a social worker anyway!) so I´m cautiously hopeful, although involving the government ministry of silly walks obviously adds another twenty-six layers of paperwork and bureaucracy (obviously).
Homework support classes restarted in Quebracho Herrado, although the weather has been foul, so mostly no-one came. Now they’re venturing out of the woodwork again, and actually a few child-free days meant that I was able to give some time to a couple of the adults who are doing their secondary certificates at night school. This is a good government scheme designed to enable people who didn’t finish school to go back as mature students and follow a general curriculum geared to adults. I was slightly concerned by the comment that “the English teacher says we don’t need to know the pronunciation because she’s only going to give us written tests…” but then I was hearted by “…but I want to learn the pronunciation otherwise it’s not any use to me…” Just one of many examples of students who have a better grasp than their teachers regarding the purpose of education.
We had a plan with a local English institute to start an advanced-level conversation group for high level students and language teachers. For the moment this is on hold, as apparently the people were intimidated by the idea that we might expose their weaknesses, which I kind of thought was the point somehow… Personally I find myself wanting to ask “really guys, do you want to learn English, or is it just a game?” Luckily Martin has a different take on things, so he’s going along to the institute in the capacity of unpaid assistant to work on building relationships and hopefully demonstrate that real live English people aren’t any more scary than real live anyone else… although in Martin´s case…?
The even-higher-than-usual level of disorganisation at Scouts caused me to throw my woggle out for a few days, but I think we´re making progress again now. At the moment I’m trying to work towards the idea of planning a week ahead, so that by this Saturdays meeting we know what we’re doing next Saturday and therefore can send messages home with the kids with whatever they need to bring or do by the next week. In England this would be so obvious that I wouldn’t even have to suggest it. Here it’s a whole new concept, but I’m sure it’s got to be possible… surely…??
Meanwhile, I no longer have the house to myself, and one grubby, tired, bad-tempered went-to-bed-late-last-night-and-then-spent-this-afternoon-playing-in-the-mud-with-the-scouts child, needs attention and a bath. But apparently there’s a bottle of wine breathing gently for his soon-to-be off-duty parents. Cheers everyone.