Fifi The Imaginary Dog

One week to go!!!!!! and only one day to go at school and I am just about keeping awake in class at the end of this 10 week term. The Peruvian staff don't seem to know any different but like a true British teacher, I have been having a good moan about how long this term is (without a half term!). It is not true that all teachers moan but it does seem to be true that all British teachers moan. We are like a rare group of people who do know know when we have a good thing going for us. Even when teachers are in Peru, living a life they could not afford in the UK, in an exciting country and earning noticably more than they would in England (and with a 10 week summer holiday!!), they still moan better than teachers from any other country! (well apart from certain Ozzies).
The kids are also great here. They are fun, relaxed and know how to work hard. In my S2 class (year 9 / Upper Middles), the pupils are hard working, good at geography and are even kind enough to read this blog!!!!
In this class, one of the boys had not got his homework with him and so chose to use the classic "my dog ate the homework" as an excuse. Obviously I went along with this and kept asking about his dog, whether his dof eats any other paper substances, whether he could bring his book to school to eat some of the out of date geography textbooks etc.
Eventually it turned out that the boy in question did not even have a dog and that his dog was a figment of his imagination. Cue, much mickey taking and the development of his dog being in the class room, being taken for walks around the school and being Christened 'Fifi'. Fifi is now the official Geography Dog, when pupils trun up at the door, we have to calm Fifi down, we let her sleep in the corner and she is now a permamaent member of the S2 classroom.
Last lesson with the S2s, I agreed that if they worked well, then I would let them watch a video on YouTube. The problem was that the video chosen was called 'goat giving birth'. How loveley, a nice nature film. Apparently not, as the slow motion and close up nature of the video make it somewhat disturbing to watch and the jokey soundtrack filled with Goat giving birth chorus clearly shows that these people know just how horrible this video is! Mother nature works in starnge ways - as do people that post things on the Internet.

My final rant is about my cleaner. I have not seen him this week and I can guess why he is hiding away. "Hola, mister!" is his cheerful catchphrase but he will not be so cheerful when I next catch him. The current trend around Markham is for the stickers to fill the new Panini World Cup sticker album. The kids are going mad for it, they are turning up early for school to do 'swaps' and they have even poroduced tables showing which ones they still need (some have been done on excel with colour coding to show need, whether it is shiny and which country it belongs to). But some of the kids had been kind enough to ignore the prices that these stickers are going for on the black market and were handing me stickers from the England team. I was building up quite a collection, I had them organised in 4-1-3-2 formation, with Gareth Barry playing deep and Heskey supporting Rooney in attack. I had the England flag and an arrow linking the flag to the World Cup sticker (I had big money offers for that sticker!).
However, on Monday Mr "Hola Mister" thought it was a good idea to clear the stickers from my board and throw them in the bin! My collection that I had to beg hard to get, my collection which was sure to act as a lucky charm as England head to South Africa. How will they focus now that they have been ripped from my board, how will they know that they have to win the cup without the arrow I had drawn in red pen? Mr"Hola Mister" has a lot to answer for and when England are slowly trundling off the pitch after losing to Germany on penalties in the first knock out stage, just remember that it is all Mr"Hola misters" fault! He could have been employed as the man to polish the trophy, he could have used his plumero (Peruvian duster) and Don Limpio to make that trophy gleam - but not any more!

The collection has started again but lets hope, for the sake of the whole country, that it is not too late!

Adios y vamos Inglaterra!