seksi graded

I've been looking at all of my friend's Facebook pages from back home, and am officially jealous because their summers are just beginning, and I go back to work tomorrow. The time has come... summer vacation is officially over.

In all honesty, I'm pretty lucky. Monday was our first day back to school, but another big THANKS to GMA for making it a holiday! Yeah, that's right, you heard me. The first day of school was turned into a holiday and school was canceled. Saturday happened to be the Philippine Independence Day, so the day off of work was transfered to the following Monday. Gotta love it.

New this year in the world of Deped (the Department of Education) is the trial run of sex education in selected public schools. This was announced to me by one of my students who came to my house and greeted me with a big "Ma'am Connie, We're going to learn about sex education!" Oh man, so glad I'm not in charge of teaching THAT class. Like some in the States, there are a large number of people here, including church officials, who do not agree with this new plan. Here's an article that features the island that I live on... to give it a more local perspective. It will be interesting to see if this will make it past the first year and what effect it has on statistics.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring. My guess is HUGE numbers of students on Tuesday; them all dressed in their spanking white uniform shirts and primply ironed plaid skirts and pressed blue pants. I'm excited to meet the new first year students, and am expecting to go back to those "who are you?... I have to talk to an american teacher?...NOSEBLEED!" moments again. ('nosebleed' is sometimes used as an excuse when the students are unsure of what to say and want to get out of answering). But that stage will pass, just like last years did, and soon we'll all be one big ol' happy family. I really hope it's a good first day!