Your Foreign Correspondent

Dear Reader,

Please consider this your first letter from Cyprus.

First (for all my friends in City House and at Highland), let me inform you that I've found a place where people do things the way I end up doing things anyways...last-minute, relaxed, one step behind the set schedule. I'm staying with a more-than-kind family who has graciously overlooked more than one ignorant blunder in the past 4 days (they try so hard to tell me everything... sigh.). They are loads of fun.

Some initial observations:

Cypriots talk at once; using Greek or sometimes English.

They love football (the non-western-PA-type), but not necessarily Cypriot teams.

They love to eat food. And it's really good food, too.

The natives fry a squeaky, salty cheese and eat it in slabs. It's delicious.

Tonight is the coldest night of the year--a frigid 44 degrees Fahrenheit--and they're walking around in wool winter coats and high boots. I'm sitting in my room in a Gap fleece, thinking that it's been a beautiful day--in the 50's, bright sunlight...

When I said that to a student this afternoon he said, "It's just too cold, Miss."

Well, as a student teacher, I study students, mostly. And this class of students, all around 10 or 11 years old, is precocious, social, eager to impress, and excited to learn. They come into the classroom with an attitude of experience, volunteering wealth of information and stories about any given topic. Some seem to have a strongly ingrained sense of superiority toward teachers as well as other students. I had an encounter with a student who had simply no idea how to complete a math problem. As I explained to her the steps she needed to take, she confidently explained that she knew already what I was going to say. "Can't you see what I've done here?"--she raised an eyebrow and pointed to that incorrect problem.

Students are quick to correct each other. If a student volunteers a wrong answer, ten other students will say "What? No!" and some will supply the response for them.

The students are highly social and love to do things in groups, or in relaxed situations where they are allowed to freely move about and talk. If this set-up is not purposefully created within the classroom, students create it for themselves at any free (or perceived "free") moment. I've never had so many children ask, "Miss, what was that you said?" simply because they were having a whispered laugh with the person next to them in the middle of correcting their papers. On the positive side, they also love to talk to me and Ms. D. When asked a question, they all want to talk all at the same time--and do!

They are unsuccessful listeners, especially in whole-class situations. No one else seems to be saying or thinking of anything valuable enough for them to stay quiet... Everyone's mind is active, thinking their own thoughts, their own responses to the teacher, and sharing those responses all at the same time. The downside: they don't seem to understand or appreciate each other as they could. The upside: they are independent thinkers, bright, intelligent... talking seems to be their way of showing appreciation. Oddly enough.

They are a funny bunch, and I can't wait to learn more from them as I ease into the role of their teacher...

Good night,
Elizabeth