Woohoo! After being only 3 points ahead of the Sydney Swans at three-quarter-time, the Lions restricted them to only a single point in the final quarter, while at the same time increasing their own lead to win by 44 points. This sets up a replay of last year's grand final against Collingwood, who defeated Port Adelaide earlier today, also by 44 points.
Go the Lions!!!
Saturday, September 20, 2003
Friday, September 12, 2003
Happy New Year!
To all the Ethiopians out there reading this, Happy New Year!
To all the Australians out there, the Lions are into the semi-finals after a strong victory over the Adelaide Crows at the Gabba. Woohoo!!! If only they'd show the games here...
To all the Australians out there, the Lions are into the semi-finals after a strong victory over the Adelaide Crows at the Gabba. Woohoo!!! If only they'd show the games here...
Thursday, September 11, 2003
Teaching in Addis
I am now a veteran of two weeks of classes at Bingham Academy, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Two weeks you say? But it's only Thursday? The answer to the conundrum is quite simple. Tomorrow is the Ethiopian New Year. Ok, fair enough, I hear you mutter, but why aren't you teaching today then? The answer to that is a little more complicated (but only a little).
The Ethiopian calendar works differently to our Gregorian calendar. For one thing, when the new year starts it will be 1996. Which is fantastic if you have started to feel you're getting a bit old - care to shed 7 years off your life? Secondly, their new year starts on the 1st of September each year. The astute amongst the audience will have noted that the 1st of September was in fact almost two weeks ago. The 1st of September (Ethiopian) usually falls on the 11th of September (Gregorian). So, there are usually 10 days difference between their calendar and ours. However, this year is a leap year, which means that the 13th month of the year has 6 days in it instead of 5, which means that Ethiopian New Year falls on the 12th of September this year. Yes, there are 13 months in the year. All of the other months have exactly 30 days.
The upshot of this is that when the school calendar was made, the leap year was not taken into consideration, so Thursday (the 11th) was marked as a day off, and Friday with it, since getting people back for 1 day is a bit pointless. By the time the leap year was discovered, it was too late to change it. So, we had a 3 day week. No complaints from anyone on staff, as far as I know.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand. As you know, I came over here primarily as a computer teacher. For the past two years, a guy by the name of Tom Hale has been teaching computers, and towards the middle of the year he and his family decided to stay for another year. This is great, because computers are taught to every student in the school, from Kindergarten up to grade 10. So, the fact that there are now two teachers means that we both had a bit more spare time than in previous years. This is good, because in addition to teaching the kids, we are also responsible for making sure every computer in the place is running (not always an easy challenge), as well as the network and internet connections and the like. I don't know how Tom has done it the past two years. Apparently he doesn't get much sleep.
As a result of this extra time we now have, we've both been given and extra class or two. In addition to the 7-10 computer classes, Tom looks after the Homeroom/Bible class for the 8th graders (1st period every day). I look after K-6 computers, and also have 7 and 8 Maths. This was not a total shock to me when I found out, and so far I've enjoyed it for the most part. In fact, I think trying to teach Kindergarteners and 1st graders will be more of a challenge than the maths. The kids are all pretty well behaved (although the 8th graders like to talk a lot), and they generally follow instructions and participate well in class.
One slight detour occurred about a week before school started. We received word that Tom Hale, who was back in the US with his family raising support for the next year, had broken his leg. As a result, they would not be getting back until the end of the first week of school. As a result, myself and Binyam (an Ethiopian guy who helps us out in the Computer Lab - he's been here for about 4 years now, so he's the real veteran) would be looking after his classes for the first week. This turned out ok in the end, because the K-6ers didn't start computer lessons until the second week. But it did make for an interesting week, and gave me an opportunity to meet some of the upper high school kids which was good.
On the night of Monday the 1st, however, we had a very sad event happen. At about 9:30 in the evening I received a call via the prayer chain we have on the compound. One of the couples who live here were expecting their second child towards the end of the year. That evening the wife had started having contractions, so they rushed to the hospital. At about 11PM, their daughter was born, but she died soon afterwards. She was burried in a private ceremony on Wednesday, and there was a memorial service last Saturday for her. The parents are doing okay under the circumstances, but I think they still have decisions to make about their future in many regards.
Life started getting back to normal towards the end of the week, and on Thursday night (or rather early Friday morning), a few of us headed out to the airport to pick up the Hales. Their plane was due to arrive at 1:40AM, so we left Bingham at about 1. It was quite odd driving through town at that time of night. Streets that were usually jammed full of people, animals and a wide assortment of vehicles were completely empty. It was a very strange sensation.
Anyway, we got to the airport, and after paying for our tickets into the terminal (1 birr, or about 20 cents each), we approached the doors, only to be stopped by the security guard. Apparently photo ID is required to enter the International Terminal in Addis Ababa. There were four of us there - Binyam (the computer lab assistant), Tim Hicks (brother of David Hicks), Marcia (one of the students who boards on the compound) and myself. Tim and Binyam both had their driver's licenses (since they had driven there), but Marcia and myself had nothing. I hadn't even brought my wallet. After about 15 minutes of negotiation in Amharic (the main language here) the guard said he would let one of us (Marcia or me) in, but not both of us. So, Tim and Marcia eventually headed inside and Binyam kept me company in the car park. We passed the time by reading signs written in Amharic. I've been teaching myself the Amharic alphabet (called the Fidel), so it was good practice. It was pretty cold though, and I was glad when they finally emerged at about 3AM. Their plane landed about 40 minutes late in the end. It was good to finally meet the 'other computer guy' though. They are a nice family.
This week although short, has been very busy. On Monday our computers contracted a virus. Or more precisely, we downloaded an update and detected a virus. So, we ended up reinstalling all the machines from scratch. So far, we've pretty much finished getting about 17 of the 24 computers back on their feet. As you can imagine, this has made teaching computers quite challenging. Spending so much time in the lab has also meant that my lesson planning has suffered somewhat also. So I am glad that we've got this next couple of days off, to give us time to get the lab going and to give me time to actually do some planning for my computer classes.
Well, that's brought you pretty much up to the minute. I have to go to the lab and see if we can get a couple more computers going. Until next time...
The Ethiopian calendar works differently to our Gregorian calendar. For one thing, when the new year starts it will be 1996. Which is fantastic if you have started to feel you're getting a bit old - care to shed 7 years off your life? Secondly, their new year starts on the 1st of September each year. The astute amongst the audience will have noted that the 1st of September was in fact almost two weeks ago. The 1st of September (Ethiopian) usually falls on the 11th of September (Gregorian). So, there are usually 10 days difference between their calendar and ours. However, this year is a leap year, which means that the 13th month of the year has 6 days in it instead of 5, which means that Ethiopian New Year falls on the 12th of September this year. Yes, there are 13 months in the year. All of the other months have exactly 30 days.
The upshot of this is that when the school calendar was made, the leap year was not taken into consideration, so Thursday (the 11th) was marked as a day off, and Friday with it, since getting people back for 1 day is a bit pointless. By the time the leap year was discovered, it was too late to change it. So, we had a 3 day week. No complaints from anyone on staff, as far as I know.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand. As you know, I came over here primarily as a computer teacher. For the past two years, a guy by the name of Tom Hale has been teaching computers, and towards the middle of the year he and his family decided to stay for another year. This is great, because computers are taught to every student in the school, from Kindergarten up to grade 10. So, the fact that there are now two teachers means that we both had a bit more spare time than in previous years. This is good, because in addition to teaching the kids, we are also responsible for making sure every computer in the place is running (not always an easy challenge), as well as the network and internet connections and the like. I don't know how Tom has done it the past two years. Apparently he doesn't get much sleep.
As a result of this extra time we now have, we've both been given and extra class or two. In addition to the 7-10 computer classes, Tom looks after the Homeroom/Bible class for the 8th graders (1st period every day). I look after K-6 computers, and also have 7 and 8 Maths. This was not a total shock to me when I found out, and so far I've enjoyed it for the most part. In fact, I think trying to teach Kindergarteners and 1st graders will be more of a challenge than the maths. The kids are all pretty well behaved (although the 8th graders like to talk a lot), and they generally follow instructions and participate well in class.
One slight detour occurred about a week before school started. We received word that Tom Hale, who was back in the US with his family raising support for the next year, had broken his leg. As a result, they would not be getting back until the end of the first week of school. As a result, myself and Binyam (an Ethiopian guy who helps us out in the Computer Lab - he's been here for about 4 years now, so he's the real veteran) would be looking after his classes for the first week. This turned out ok in the end, because the K-6ers didn't start computer lessons until the second week. But it did make for an interesting week, and gave me an opportunity to meet some of the upper high school kids which was good.
On the night of Monday the 1st, however, we had a very sad event happen. At about 9:30 in the evening I received a call via the prayer chain we have on the compound. One of the couples who live here were expecting their second child towards the end of the year. That evening the wife had started having contractions, so they rushed to the hospital. At about 11PM, their daughter was born, but she died soon afterwards. She was burried in a private ceremony on Wednesday, and there was a memorial service last Saturday for her. The parents are doing okay under the circumstances, but I think they still have decisions to make about their future in many regards.
Life started getting back to normal towards the end of the week, and on Thursday night (or rather early Friday morning), a few of us headed out to the airport to pick up the Hales. Their plane was due to arrive at 1:40AM, so we left Bingham at about 1. It was quite odd driving through town at that time of night. Streets that were usually jammed full of people, animals and a wide assortment of vehicles were completely empty. It was a very strange sensation.
Anyway, we got to the airport, and after paying for our tickets into the terminal (1 birr, or about 20 cents each), we approached the doors, only to be stopped by the security guard. Apparently photo ID is required to enter the International Terminal in Addis Ababa. There were four of us there - Binyam (the computer lab assistant), Tim Hicks (brother of David Hicks), Marcia (one of the students who boards on the compound) and myself. Tim and Binyam both had their driver's licenses (since they had driven there), but Marcia and myself had nothing. I hadn't even brought my wallet. After about 15 minutes of negotiation in Amharic (the main language here) the guard said he would let one of us (Marcia or me) in, but not both of us. So, Tim and Marcia eventually headed inside and Binyam kept me company in the car park. We passed the time by reading signs written in Amharic. I've been teaching myself the Amharic alphabet (called the Fidel), so it was good practice. It was pretty cold though, and I was glad when they finally emerged at about 3AM. Their plane landed about 40 minutes late in the end. It was good to finally meet the 'other computer guy' though. They are a nice family.
This week although short, has been very busy. On Monday our computers contracted a virus. Or more precisely, we downloaded an update and detected a virus. So, we ended up reinstalling all the machines from scratch. So far, we've pretty much finished getting about 17 of the 24 computers back on their feet. As you can imagine, this has made teaching computers quite challenging. Spending so much time in the lab has also meant that my lesson planning has suffered somewhat also. So I am glad that we've got this next couple of days off, to give us time to get the lab going and to give me time to actually do some planning for my computer classes.
Well, that's brought you pretty much up to the minute. I have to go to the lab and see if we can get a couple more computers going. Until next time...
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