First Day at St. Mary's

First Day in the Schools
Today was our first day in the schools, which I was very excited about. However, we had to be there before 8:30, which meant we had to be at the bus stop before 8. We all agreed to meet outside the security lodge at 7:50, as Katie and Jess were the only two that knew how to get to the schools. We walked to the bus stop and gave each respective person (Katie or Jess, depending on which school we were at) our money for the bus. The bus showed up around 8:05, and Jess and Katie got on first to give the bus driver the money. When they told the bus driver there was nineteen of us, he got pissed off, and said he didn’t know if we could even all fit on his bus. Apparently he was so pissed off that he didn’t even make us pay. So we got on the bus and all managed to find seats on the top level (it was a double Decker). There were these British girls who were on their way to school, and they were asking all sorts of questions about America and yellow school buses and other things like that. When we got to our stop, a lot of the British students were getting off as well. Apparently there were so many of us getting off at the stop that we were holding up traffic. The bus driver let all but five something of us get off the bus, and then he just closed the doors and drove off. He did stop around the corner and let everyone else off, but it was rather freaky at the time. We then split up, as the students going to Woolton were going one way and the students going to St. Mary’s were going another way. It was only about a five-minute walk to St. Mary’s from the bus stop, and it was not hard to find. From now on, I think I am going to walk to St. Mary’s every day instead of taking the bus. When we got to St. Mary’s, we were taken into the teacher’s lounge (what they call the staff room) to wait for our teachers to come and “claim us”. After the beginning of the day meeting, the teachers took people until Kristen and I were the only ones left. Apparently our teacher doesn’t come to the meetings. After a few minutes, a lady came and asked us to sign in, and she showed us where to go after we had signed in. They are doing construction on the school, and to get to our classroom we have to walk through this open walkway that the students are not allowed to use. There is a large bench that has stop signs on it at each door that we need to step over to get through. Our teacher’s name is Mr. Steven Foster, and he is a really nice guy, though he is very strict with his students. At the beginning of the day, Mr. Foster let his students ask questions for a good half hour, because he knew that if he didn’t, they wouldn’t be concentrating all day. I actually had a lot of fun at the school, and I loved it there. I can’t wait till I get to go back and be there for a full three weeks. I even got paired up with two boys who need more help in the class, and I will be helping them on a daily basis when I am there in June. Kristen got paired up with the other two boys who needed more help. The kids are learning about Vikings right now, and on June 18th, they are going on a Viking field trip. Kristen and I will get to go with them, which I am looking forward to. One thing that I found interesting was how polite their students are. Every time Kristen and I tried to hold open the door and let the boys go in the door first, they always said “you first Miss”. And they always addressed us as Miss, and were always very proper. They also just say Miss: they usually don’t use last names. At the end of the day, Kristen and I asked Mr. Foster if we could help him clean up, since there was a big mess, and he said no, that we were free to go, and that we should go to the pub. We told him that we probably wouldn’t be going to the pub as we had a quiz to study for, a lesson plan to write, and two observation write ups to do. We spent most of our night either in the library or in our rooms working on our homework. I was in my room, however, blackboard wasn’t working, and so I had to go to the library in order to publish my stuff. Overall, I greatly enjoyed my first day at the school, and I am really looking forward to going back.

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