The Cup

Internet access at home has been restored thanks to my landlord Igor and his tech geek friend Nikolai. So I can stop reading about Hitler and Stalin (a mild obsession this year, no wonder) and write about my last few days at the school.

As the ESL teacher, I'm required to give (by whom? not sure. nothing is sure here in the FSU) an end-of-year test from the US that's full of culture-bound vocabulary, along with bubble-in answers to multiple choice questions. It's very NCLB and a style of assessment never seen before by these international school kids brought up w/PYP and MYP assessments. (this year I've learned a lot of new jargon. PYP, MYP, IB, not FCPS and NCLB)

It was a pain for everyone. The kids sat there quietly and filled in bubbles. I kept waiting for an explosion from someone "Why are we DOING this?" but none came. They're probably not confident enough in their English.

Today, as a reward for the grade 8/9 group, I scrounged around for a TV/DVD player, wrote up some background information, and showed them the first 20 minutes of "The Cup," a film set in Bhutan. It's based on a true story about young Buddhist monks who were determined to see the 1998 World Cup in their remote monastery.

It's in Hindi, with English subtitles, so I figured that was the educational part--listen to Hindi, read English. They seemed to understand and get into it, as my nieces and nephews did when I showed it to them when they were all about 6 years old.

The movie is 2 hours long. There are four days left of school. That covers it.