Life Happens

Okay, let’s face it. I am depressed. I am not going to let it get me, BUT, it’s there. I am almost convinced I will not find an ESL job in PG, but despite having talked about it, don’t think I will be moving to Vancouver for it. I am just… more at home in PG than Vancouver. I don’t want to be worried about getting lost. I don’t want to worry about buses and all that. I know, a little pathetic of me, but whatever, it’s what I want, or think I want anyways. However, I am not being a total bum about it, although it does feel this way to me, and therefore, probably to you as well. I have applied for all the volunteer positions I can think of. I am going to set up a meeting with a director to talk to her about some options I have. I would enjoy doing some more observations along with maybe a class or two. I would enjoy subbing as well. So, I am going to do that. I am trying to find out if we still have an “ESL cafe” in town, and would be excited to take a part of that as well. Hopefully, at least one of these volunteer positions come true for me as well! I need a job, so, I will have to find something soon, ESL or not. Monday’s goals.

I am going to be one of four mentors working on the Go Girl Program this spring. This program is ran through Big Brothers and Big Sisters. It is aimed at pre-adolescent girls and is meant to help build confidence and self-esteem in these girls. It sounds like a pretty great program, and I am excited to have this opportunity. I had it last year, but it wasn’t the right time for me. A big part of this program which appeals to me on a professional level is that we are given basic lesson plans for each meeting, and we have to facilitate them. I am happy to have this chance to continue my teaching, even if not in an ESL environment. It also makes me happy to know that my teen story might inspire someone. I know I followed a very clean path, and it is possible that hearing this from me will encourage the girls to step away from the peer pressure they might feel to conform to fit in. In a lot of ways, I was a pretty typical teen. I was depressed. I bullied kids who I didn’t like. This did not become clear to me until long after high school ended, and I am a little ashamed of what I did. However, I have forgiven myself, and I have moved onto be the girl that you all know and love. I will have to tell this to these girls. It is a little scary to know that I will “bare my soul”, but I am at a point where I am ready to do this. This program starts in about mid-April, but my training is this week. This program will run for seven weeks (which will look like nine on the calendar because of two long weekends in there), for 2 hours a week. I am so excited!

I am still going to sign up for those two courses I talked about previously; they start April 20th. I am also signing up for a first aid course. I took Nathaniel sledding on Tuesday and when he scratched the heck out of his head, it was the scare of my young life. I thought he might have a concussion, and I quickly realized that I had no idea what a concussion looked like, or what to do about it. This event on cemented in my mind that I need a first aid course before I go overseas. If I do something dumb to myself, like fall in a sewage hole again, I need to know how to treat it myself! I won’t always have a Katherine around to play doctor! This is in May. Probably also in May I will have my yard sale for Relay for Life 2011 and United Hearts Children’s Centre. For those of you in PG, I will gladly take your yard sale treasures for this fundraiser! And of course, the Relay is in May as well! As you can tell, I have big plans for my summer here, and I have big plans for my future still. And of course, I am raising money for that too!

On a side note, mostly about Nathaniel’s mishap on the hill…. I had a mishap on the hill today too! I was cruising along, enjoying the perfect spring day… snow was sloshing behind me, and life was grand. And then, I had time to think “oh shit!” and “thank god I wear a helmet” before my face crashed into the snow. I don’t know the rest, but I landed hard on my back as well. My goggles were around my neck (making it hard to take off my helmet!) My little neck warmer thing was filled with snow. I wasn’t sure I could move. (I am pretty sure part of my back landed on something and will soon be bruised, but Mom says that she can see no damage to me yet). I yell curse words down the hill so that Mom at least knows I am alive. She asks if I am okay, and I answer with I think so, but I am not yet sure. My back hurt so much I didn’t know what to do. Once I caught the breath that this wicked fall had stolen away, I slowly sat up. Okay, good, my back merely hurts. I pull out a tissue to dry the snow off my face, and discover that somewhere, there is blood on my face. It takes me a bit to figure out that the bridge of my nose is bleeding a little. As I start to get re-dressed (there was snow everywhere!), I realize that I broke the inside lens of my goggles, and made a little crack in the outside of them. I figure it was the goggles breaking that made my nose bleed. And now that I am safely at home, my whole body is starting to hurt to move (and my back is even sorer). I had a bath, but tomorrow will still be a rough day. If I had more time to think thoughts as I flew to my death (I enjoy being dramatic), I would have also thought “this is going to hurt”. One of mom’s statements was pretty much just that : you will hurt in the morning! I joked that I did it to make Nate feel better, but Nate’s entire face was scratched from his sliding face first to a stop at the bottom of the sledding hill. As upset as I was about it, he shouldn’t have gone down on his face! Those were not my instructions to him! Nathaniel was really upset by the blood on his face, so I can only show you the picture I took when we got home today, of me!

I want to thank all of you for your thoughts, prayers and donations towards United Hearts Children Centre. What could have been a crisis with the roofing situation has been handled, and we are back to raising money for the inside of the orphanage. We couldn’t have gotten this far without you guys!

Anyways, that’s my week for you. Don’t worry, I am going to pull my shit together and get this back together. I have to drop off a criminal record check, mom and my passport renewals, go swimming?, I am going to apply everywhere and get a job, I am going to talk to people about ESL placements, and I am going to find volunteer work as well. I have my first interview with Georgia on Thursday, and I am going to get that job and go to Georgia for September! And I am a month ahead of university students, so I can get the best jobs!

I love you, my dear friends.

Excitement!

My life is wonderful, but things annoy me. So, I am going to rant for a minute, and then tell you all about the goodness that is Jenna.

1. Just because I am white, does not mean I can help you financially. There are things I will support and things I will not. A friend from Ghana emailed me last week begging for money. He can’t pay the rent on his drinking spot, and thinks I should pay it for him. I was like, I don’t have the money. He told me that I would have to find it because he needed it. It wasn’t until I told him that I didn’t know how I was going to pay my own rent that he gave me a break on it. He still messages me every day about it. However, when Pastor Elisha called me this morning telling me that the orphanage is not able to complete the roofing project because the price of everything has gone up and there is just not enough money, I did react. I emailed my people and asked if they could spare any money. Housing 25 orphans is far more important to me than one man’s bar. Maybe I am a snob, but something’s you just cannot ask of me!

2. People who think I should have a boyfriend, and that I am being stubborn by not finding one. Mom’s friend Charlie (don’t even get me started on Charlie! He is at least 80 and drives me nuts!) insists every time he comes over that I need a man to solve all my problems (none of which I believe I had). When I tell him that I am happy without a man, he says I am lying. Why is it hard to believe that I am actually happy in life?

Okay, now that I am done ranting, I am taking a deep breath and am going to tell you all about my new plans for life!

I have been asked to help run “Go Girls”, a program ran through Big Brothers and Big Sisters which focuses on helping girls develop self-esteem and confidence, along with providing healthy choices for life. I was asked to do this last year, but if you think about, I was really in no state to try to help anyone! This year, I am seriously considering it. This year, they are running it for 7 weeks as a once a week after school program. It will be four girls to one mentor if all goes according to plan. I am pretty excited about it this year!

Because my grammar skills suck, I have found an online course which is designed for teaching grammar to ESL students. I am hoping that it will give me more skills and make it easier for me to step into a true teaching position. It is a six week course with two sessions a week. It sounds like there is two weeks for each assignment that is given. At the end of the course, there is a final exam, which is also online. I missed the March course because I didn’t think of this website in time, so I am going to take it for mid-April. I am also going to take a course on Enhancing Language Skills in Children at the same time. I feel that these two courses will be the most beneficial of the courses listed on the website for me at this time. There are actually five courses I want to take (all six weeks, and all $127 each). There is one on teaching pre-school which although I hope not to have pre-school I think it will give me great ideas to take into the younger classrooms with me. Although it is aimed at 2-5 year olds, I know that 7 and 8 year olds would like the same, slightly adapted materials. There is a course on just teaching ESl students, which although will mostly be a review of CELTA, I wouldn’t mind taking as well, because they might look at things slightly differently and give me a better idea of the classroom as well. There is no teaching in these programs, just coursework. This program also says that it will give you a better idea about assessing students’ performance, which is something that we don’t really cover in CELTA. The final course that I have bookmarked for my future learning is a course on being Assertive. This is something I am very aware that I lack, and am willing to work on. It was one of the things that I was told in every lesson in CELTA that I needed to work on and something that I was aware of before that. Hopefully, I will take all five of these courses this summer, and you will see a stronger, more knowledgeable, more confident Jenna come September.

I have been downloading any free grammar and teaching books I can find, and am probably going to go on another hunt today. I love the world of illegal downloading, haha. I would like to have a mini ESL library on my computer for my guidance and helping my students in the future. I am going to buy one of them external hard drive things and save it all on there for my travels. It will be good.

Speaking of my travels, I have a little plan, but still need to do a little more research on it. I am thinking right now about the Republic of Georgia in Eastern Europe. They are in the second year (and possibly last, I don’t think they are sure yet!) of a government funded English language training program for the public school system. It is classified as a volunteer program, but volunteers get a monthly payment of approximately $275. The contract states that you will give approximately $50 of this to your homestay family, or will buy some groceries. The information about Georgia says that a family of four eats for $75 a month. From what everyone says $225 a month is more than enough to live comfortably, but obviously not to save a lot of money. Flights are booked and paid for by the employer. There is a seven day orientation upon arrival, during which everything is paid, including your hotel and meals. Volunteers are provided with a cell phone upon arrival, and all calls to the employer and other volunteers is included in the plan. You do have to pay for other calls though. Volunteers are placed throughout the country – and like IVHQ, you don’t know where you are going until orientation. This isn’t a problem to me; I would love to be placed in a rural village where I could be a part of the community out there. I read some complaints that there might not be running water, but again, this is not something that bothers me. And if I do get placed in a city, there is plenty of culture and life to be found there as well! I love that placements are with a homestay family – part of doing this is to learn about another culture! I know that in Ghana, I was thankful for volunteer housing in the end, but I think this will be ideal. I will still see other volunteers, but will get a full dose of the culture. The information says that most of the homestay families are actually staff from the school which we will work at, so that makes it nice as well. The teaching is alongside a local teacher, with a sharing of the workload. Like many foreign English students, English has been learned “from a book” so pronunciation might not be right. This is part of my job – to give the students (and staff) proper pronunciation and natural English practice.

This idea of teaching is really appealing to me right now. As I mentioned in my last blog, I am nervous about my teaching skills, and do not feel reading to head into the “real world” of teaching right now. I am obviously hoping that my upcoming courses will help me feel more confident as well but…. For now, I would love to start beside another teacher, sharing the already planned curriculum, and learning my teaching style in a much safer environment. Georgia is taking anyone who can make a semester commitment, no teaching experience required. I feel this is a safe place for me to get my feet wet before I commit to my own classroom. There is also the opportunity for tutoring and helping in the community with events. Each teacher is matched with a previous volunteer teacher to help make the transition into Georgia a little easier to bear. Like my trip to Ghana, I don’t know why I am choosing here, but it sounds so good!

Of course, this is not as guaranteed as Ghana was. There are two interviews which will occur, providing they like the paperwork I provide. September is when the new semester’s start, so it is a busy time to go, but it is when I would like to go. They can only accept 50 volunteers at a time. Volunteers can start on the 15th or 30th of every month except December (because from December 23 – January 19 is holidays). If you do a two semester contract, you are provided with an airline ticket back home or to a place of your choice providing it costs less. Right now, I am thinking I might take that time to go to England and visit Andrea, or maybe make a quick trip to Ghana. Who knows? If I don’t go to England during the winter break, I would hope that Andrea and I could do our Europe trip in the summer time when my contract is up. Obviously, this is only possible if I actually make some money this summer!

Right now, my long term goal is do a couple of years teaching in various locations. Vietnam has a CELTA program, and also offers the Young Learners extension program. I am currently thinking I would like to take the CELTA-YL in Vietnam, and then do a year or so working there. And then, it’s off to travel the world again!

I have been thinking a lot about the community centre type thing I want to eventually open in some village where I decide to settle. This community centre of mine obviously needs to pay me enough to live on, because I will be settled into the community and my life savings will either be depleted or low unless I find the money making jobs! (And there is nowhere in ESL that you can get “rich”) I want to have “theme” days. For example, on Monday we might have a girl’s day – where we work on the Go Girls program, along with maybe some things from Girl Guides. Maybe Tuesday is a sport day. Wednesday could be a homework day, and I could possibly offer English classes in the evening to adults. Thursday could be craft day and Friday could be fun and games. I don’t know, I am not there in life, but I think this would be amazing! I think that having one day of the week for each thing would make it easier for my “students” to plan for these things. But, this is a long ways away, but no harm in starting planning and collecting now! And I may as well use as many skills as I can! I couldn’t sleep last night; I was so busy thinking about all these things! In the day, maybe I could do a little day care thing with the little ones, like what we do at the orphanage – some learning, some fun, some free time.

So yep, that’s my life. I am going to slip onto four pages on Word, and I am sure you have had quite enough of my life anyways! I am just so happy and excited and have so many things I want to do, that I cannot contain it!

I love you!