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Totally random night last night! We went to fields avenue again and the first bar we went to was this small cramped place with all the girls dancing raised in the middle. This korean guy was waving at Judy and all the girls started shouting at him (Paulo said they were jealous!).... kinda surreal. The thing is none of the women can work out why we're there so they all assume me and Judy are lesbians! So I try to tell them as soon as possible that I'm there for RENEW... there's been several occasions that girls have come over to flirt with us! very weird.
After that bar we went to a bar called the 'bird cage' (nice huh) and the dancing there was pretty.... ummm erotic. This bloke from Devon sat next to me and proceeded to tell me that he was here to help the girls (which he may well have been - about 95% of the men in the bars are horrible but some are slightly more borderline - lonely men who don't want to hurt anyone and fall in love with a girl.....) but then started to tell me that someone as young as me couldn't possibly help many girls a (which i do know) and that i was naiive etc etc etc. I got a bit annoyed at him.
Then this beggar girl with bare feet came up to Judy and Judy gave her her sandals.... I was impressed.
Yesterday morning I helped with the Maths class. I wasn't supposed to be there but ended up there and there were two of the students who were really behind the rest. I took them out and gave them a back to basics - its difficult because some of them have almost completed high school so know it all anyway, then some barely finished primary school so don't even know how to do negative numbers.... etc (so for the mathmaticians among you - trying to teach algebraic expressions to people who don't have any understanding of negative numbers is virtually impossible.... that's the problem with this course - it assumes understanding, and we have to do eight subjects at GCSE level in one year....). Anyway - i quite enjoyed the maths teaching which surprised me - was very satisfying to see them both gain confidence over the two hours when they realised they could actually understand it.
The schools here aren't great because while we have 30 to a class they have more like 60 and in a class that big people will get left behind. The schools are so massive - there's 5000 - 10000 pupils in the schools!!
On monday night we all went swimming. All the pools here are outdoors as its so hot. We went partly because we had new girls and its a good way of getting people to bond. I think its quite hard for the girls who've been here a while to fit in with new, emotionally battered, people coming in. They're all doing really well though!! Anyway the swimming was great fun - the pool was so warm and we stayed in for 2 hours (6-8pm - in england I would have died of hypothermia!). We watched the sunset while in the pool - rather beautiful.
I'm supposed to be teaching this morning but there's bad weather so I don't think anyone is going to show.... however its only 10 and the class was supposed to start at 9 - they might still come. This is the Philippines after all!
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