On the road again...

Not really, although for some reason that title seemed very appropriate.



Well, the new trimester has begun in earnest, and oddly enough I find that Roman and I have flip-flopped in our class load for the term. Last trimester, I had to design the school schedule so that it could be run as a one-woman show, and when Roman arrived a month and a half later there wasn't much for him to do other than teach lessons. Now I am teaching a second-level theory class that only includes a few students who exhibited the drive to go further into analysis and learning about the function of various chords. I feel like I had a few more students that could've competently entered this class, but many of them feel a touch insecure about moving so quickly and have decided to take Roman's basic theory class as a refresher. This means that he has alot of students. Good for him- I have no problem dealing with a lighter classload.



That said, I also feel a little disappointed that I don't have more students continuing into the next level. I try not to take it personally- the test scores of my students proved that they learned alot, and yet I feel somewhat like a failure for not having produced a class of students that were fully prepared to continue into the more difficult aspects of theory. Because he is naturally competitive and driven, Roman has (surely not intended) issued something of a challenge to me... I get the feeling that he plans to produce better results than I did, and so I am greatly disheartened but hope that I can compete. It is hard to be brought so firmly back down to terra firma and realize that maybe you aren't the teacher you thought you were. Eeek.



As we prepared for this week, we were blessed with another opportunity to spend some time with a fellow American- the incredible Sister Sally. Sally and her husband live in the kind of place that most people dream about living in...it's a jungle, surrounded on all sides by great vistas of ocean and port. We had been invited to have lunch with her, and then the intention was to co-operatively teach her how to create powerpoint presentations. Lunch was a fabulous American treat- REAL HAMBURGERS, followed by the incredible experience of seeing a sloth face to face. The poor little guy was cornered in a ginger plant by Sally's well-meaning dogs, and we appreciated getting to see the koala-sized fellow smiling at us from a foot away.



After the close encounter, Roman and I ventureed into Sally's office to help her with powerpoint. Because I am a control freak, I had quickly dispatched Roman from the assignment and had fully taken over teaching Sally how to use the program. God had a good laugh at my expense however, as Sally's husband Crosby took Roman on a grand tour of their property, complete with freshly grown grapefruit sampling and the exquisite delicacy of cacao pods. You have to understand- when I was little, my father kept (and I believe he still has) an extensive collection of OLD National Geographic magazines. In one of these magazines, I remember an article about the Amazon Rainforest, and in particular a picture of small tribal children sucking the sweet skin from cacao pods. Ever since I have wanted to try this delicacy...and here Roman had blindly stumbled into it! I was SO JEALOUS! And believe me, he's gotten alot of mileage out of it, still rubbing it in from time to time (inadvertantly letting me know just how he felt about the powerpoint upset... I'm learning alot about cross-gender communication here!).



Anyways, to make a long story short, I am getting the opportunity to relax just a little this trimester, and I hope that this will give me the opportunity to figure out exactly what I am good at so that I can best contribute to our final trimester, due to start in February. At the very least it will give me the chance to start getting that dratted book you all keep talking about put together. Believe me, there is a chapter sitting right here on this very laptop! We'll see what comes from it.

At any rate, the trimester is off and running. We're doing all that we can to make sure that this trimester trumps the last!