First day at Aloha College

Have got a great first impression of Aloha College! Mrs. Elizabeth Batchelor, the new Director of Senior school (Year 7-13) seems great! She used to be director of Junior school. The school buildings are really nice. All the new teachers (one Irish, five from England, and me) met the Directors, the IT people and lots of teachers at Aloha this morning. The other new teachers are nice, and for some (strange?) reason rather British. Had a coffee with two of them after work today; Lisa and Amy. We all live in the same area.

The cutest thing I've learned today is that I'll get my own class room!! I can't believe it! I'm so excited! All the students will come to me, instead of me having to run around the whole school building for different classes, as I'm used to in Norway. So I've got my own class room with my own computer, my own book shelves etc. Fantastic! It is next to the IB Coordinator's office, so I'd better behave very well at all times...

I have also learnt that I'll be teaching six classes, 27 hours per week;
- year 7, 8, 9 (they sit the Cambridge Checkpoint exam by the end of year 9),
- year 10 (IGCSE exams at the end of year 11), and
- year 12 and 13 (IB Diploma - English B - the same syllabus I've been teaching at Berg vgs). They use lots of different terms here: Key Stage 3 (KS3) is the same is year 7-9, Key stage 4 (KS4) is the same as year 10-11, and Sixth Form is the same is the IB Diploma Programme. Confused? I'm not.

Another new thing is the assembly, which I think is held twice a week. Don't know what happens during the assemblies yet. Luckily, they promised that my tutor group (yes, I'll be a form tutor/kontaktlærer/home room teacher) will not be responsible the first couple of weeks. Thank you!! Also, the teachers have lunch in the same cafeteria as the students. And apparently there's a table reserved for us. Wonder if it's like in the Harry Potter films? Ha ha:) Lunch is rather late, from 1.20-2.20. However, someone claimed this was early seeing as we're in Spain.

So life in Spain is still good. I'm excited about all the new things I experience every day.