Post move

My niece Karen arrived last week and has been helping out in the school. It is great to have her help, as we have our hands full all the time. We are putting her Signing skills to good use. She has learned to prepare a basic powerpoint presentation, which we use for teaching reading, and is beginning to read picture books to the students, among other things.

We've also been scoping out new transportation, since I've moved to the other side of town. It used to be 20 minutes to get to the school, in two public cars (sort of a shared taxi on a route.) Now it is over an hour with one or two cars, plus a bus. The first day it took two hours to arrive! We whittled the return trip down to an hour and forty minutes. Yesterday we tried a whole different route, and were pleased to find we arrived in a mere hour and 20 minutes! Looks like that is going to be the winner. It is just one bus and one car.

Some of the bus time can be redeemed, using the time to read, study, and plan. The car time is more difficult to use, as there is usually no space to work. We are crammed into the back seat of a car that comfortably seats two, but seats three in a pinch. How many ride in it here? Four. I always get the feeling I'll be getting out skinnier than I went in! When it rains, it will be taxi time, because there is a 20 minute walk to get to the transportation routes.

Some have asked why I don't just get a car. There are a few reasons. One, it would probably add another $500US to my monthly costs, between maintanence and gas at over $4.00 a gallon, as well as insurance. This doesn't even consider the original cost of the car, which could be pretty high. But the biggest reason is just that driving here is absolutely crazy. A couple of weeks ago, in a public car, we riders heard on the radio that the government was taking steps to make people stop driving so poorly. Everyone in the car laughed, including the driver, because we all knew there was no way.

If you get in an accident here, and there are any injuries, you are arrested! It doesn't matter if you are at fault or not. Being single, I don't have someone to run bail me out. So I will stick with public transportation.

We aren't in a routine yet, but between the bus rides and classes we put in a full day's work. The school computer printouts are temporarily suspended while I get all the computer equipment set up again. Right now we are coming home almost too tired to cook dinner. Between the intense heat and the stress of new transportation, we are quite worn out. This, I am sure, is for the moment, and will gradually subside, as we get used to the new circumstances.

We are probably finishing school around mid-june. We follow the schedule of the National School for the deaf, so we cannot fix a time until they do. It may seem surprising that we don't have the whole school calendar planned out in advance, but that is the way it is done here.