School Daze

I know posting has been slow lately, but I promise that I really do have a good excuse this time. It's back to school season! This year we've decided that it is so exciting everyone is joining in. The kids started back to school on the 6th, and I started language training the same day. Husband and I are also back to our various other educational pursuits. After a couple weeks of summer break, I am back to my Masters degree (I graduate in Dec, yay!) while Husband is pursuing a post-grad certificate program in IT program management since he may as well put the rest of his GI Bill to good use!* Husband also starts ConGen on Monday. This is the same course that I just finished which is required to get your consular commission. As an EFM (eligible family member, which is what we call all family members listed officially on one's orders), Husband will not be eligible to adjudicate visas like an FSO, but there are many other jobs in the consular section for which a cleared American is needed. Manila is a rather large post and there are many jobs available for EFMs that pay on the US pay schedule. After looking into jobs on the Philippine economy, Husband has decided that it would probably be better to pursue employment at the Embassy and earn a decent wage rather than try to put his MBA to use and make very little.

Now that school has been in session for a couple of weeks, I can report that all children seem to be doing quite well...thriving even. I was concerned, especially for C, that the change from small private school to large public school would be a difficult adjustment, but my children constantly amaze me with their incredible resilience. C is absolutely loving her new school. She has made lots of friends, joined the morning announcements team, and her favorite class is FACS (I forget what it stands for, but it is apparently the new, PC term for Home Ec) where she gets to cook! J is also enjoying school, and she recently started soccer. Today was her 1st game. I was a little worried how she was feeling about the whole thing because we discovered at practice that she is not only the only new child (all the other children played together last year), she was also 1 of only 2 girls on the team! J is more than a bit shy, and at practice one of the rambunctious boys kicked her soccer ball away from her and the look on her face just broke my heart. At first J mostly stood around on the field, but after a couple of quarters and some encouragement from her parents and coaches (who are really wonderful) she started running around after the ball just like the other kids. She even kicked a few times! I was very, very proud of her. A seems to be flourishing in pre-K. His teacher is very sweet, and although A is not quite over his shyness, he is doing well. A will be starting ice skating lessons in Oct (NHL here we come!).

As for me, well, language training is not quite what I expected. I am in a class of two...actually, I am in a department of two! L and I make up the entire Tagalog language department at FSI :) Fortunately, L is an awesome girl, and it has been a very bonding experience so far. I imagine we will be very close by the end of the course as we have nothing but each other to talk about during class :) Another benefit to being in such a small class is that we got to set our own schedule. Generally language classes at FSI are either in the morning (0740 - 1440, 5 hours of classroom instruction and two hours allotted for language lab) or in the afternoon (1040 - 1640). Since it is just L and I, we requested to have class from 0740-1240 with no break for language lab so that we would be free to do it at our leisure. This way I will always be home to pick up the kids from school, even on Wed when they have early release. It is really a great schedule! As for the course itself, let me start by saying if my teachers are representative of the Philippines, I think I am really going to like it there. They are such a warm people, and they love to laugh! Just like me! :) As for the course itself, well, it has been an interesting experience so far. Tagalog is a very unique language. It is of Malay origin, but it has been heaving influenced by Spanish and English, so it is really a bundle of contradictions and lack of rules. On top of that our instructors, as wonderful as they are, are not teachers by profession, so it has been a struggle to understand some of the madness behind their methods. We had little structure to our days, no drills, no grammar, no homework. I actually became quite jealous of my friends in Hindi and Chinese who had hours of class devoted to grammar, pronunciation drills, etc. It had gotten so bad that on Thursday L & I met with the head of of the SE Asia Maritime Dept (who also happens to be a Tagalog speaker and has a PhD in second language acquisition). She was very understanding and seemed to be expecting some of our feedback.  I don't know what she said to our instructors but yesterday was like a brand new class. It was a good Tagalog day! I am also amazed at how much we have learned so far. We have only been in class for two weeks, and we are already having small, halting conversations. It boggle the mind to think of how far we will have advanced by the time we leave next year.