Audrey is my friend from Ireland. I first met her family in Norway when we went to IKEA together. This seems like a lifetime ago. Then, Audrey’s family welcomed us in Ireland and took us on the most beautiful trip. Today I saw Audrey and her dad at the seawall in Malta 🙂 and later in the day I ran into them at the pub… What a nice day. We had such a  nice time and laughed a lot. The world is getting smaller by the minute.

And once again I ran out of time to look over my research proposal. We’ll have to present it in a month from now and then we will also find out where we will spend the last semester. I’ll try my best to work on it this week, because we’ll be swamped with homework for the new module before we now it.

This was a great 4 day weekend, we were good tourists and mediocre students. All in all a 10/10 for this long weekend. My eye infection is also gone, tomorrow I will start taking anti-histamines, it looks as though I am allergic to cacti. noooooooo, lol.  I have no idea what’s blooming, but my eyes & nose sure don’t like it.

PS: Did I mention that I went for a swim in the Mediterranean today?

In the last couple of weeks we’ve been able to visit some schools here in Malta. They are grouped in 3 categories: State, Independent, and Church schools. I spent some time in an independent school and in a state school. Here are some observations.

1. Religion is a part of the programs and prayers are a part of everyday life.

2. Every classroom has an interactive whiteboard, I would love one for my house.

3. The classrooms are quite structured and academic. They are located in schools and look like classrooms. The three year olds sat at table and learned their ABCs for most of the morning. When it was “free play”, the teacher told the children where they could play. You play with the blocks, you play with the sand, and you two can do art. For art they coloured in the number 1 with paint. Finished. Move on to the next activity. What a difference. I never realized just how much freedom we enjoyed at Pooh Corner.

4. At drop-off & pick-up, children are handed-over at the gate, and there is little parent communication. I’m not sure when the parents actually go to the classrooms. At the independent/private school, drop-off was done in a gym-like room. There was so much noise and craziness that I felt so lost. There must have been over 70 children running lose. Then the head of school blows a whistle, all children line up, and they pray together.

5. In the independent school children speak English, in the state school children speak Maltese.

no alarm, no essays, no homework.

We’ve finished the first course here in Malta, Professional Reflections. The paper was the most challenging paper I’ve written so far, but I loved stretching my brain in new ways. We ended the course with a guest speaker from Denmark. He talked to us about ECCE and the 17 of us were happy to listen to a man for a change. His way of being/ teaching reminded us of our teachers in Norway. I cannot believe the amount of people we’ve met from all over the world.

Today we’re handing the paper that has been taking over our lives for the last weeks. Mine is waiting to be e-mailed, I’m too scared to click send. Seems so final.

Today I also woke up with an eye infection. Time to take a break from my laptop.

I’ve just mailed off my first draft of my paper to Ola. I am so pleased with the kind of learning community we have created for ourselves. We are here for each other ready to give support. I just love these women.

Today I bought a delicious pizza -straight from the oven- and ate it at the harbour near Msida church. There was happiness in every bite.

Then the man who was painting his boat started talking to me and invited me back for wine another day when the paint is dry. Oh yeah, he was at least 60, had leather skin, and was wearing his undies! Evan, you should be on the next flight to Malta!

When you live with 3 of your classmates you can really sense that a paper is due soon. We’ve been getting up around 7, even on weekends.

The problem with our house is that you can’t have many secrets because sounds just gets amplified… So this morning I was woken up by Natalia cleaning up the dishes, it sounded like she was banging pots right in my bedroom. Just now I opened a well-deserved bottle of red wine.

Plop.

Me: “Pretend you didn’t hear that.”

Natalia and Audrey laughing at the other end of the house.

What’s amazing is that they are so dedicated that they could resist the temptation to meet me in the kitchen.

Today we paid our rent, that means we’ve already lived here for over a month! Our landlord Carlos got someone to drive us home, because he sent some guys over to our house to fix the internet. Our driver loved Bob Marley (and Michael Jackson) and had a crazy sound system in his car. We listened to Bob Marley at full volume and it felt strangely nice to be in a car listening to music (we’ve been exposed to a lot of really bad music that 20 year-olds like…). I’ve never heard anyone honk as much as our driver, but it work, we made it home safely.

It was fabulous! The eager and mature students sat in the front, the young girls checking facebook sat in the back. Ola, Olivera, Monique, and I took up the whole 3 hour class with our presentations about Poland, Serbia, the Philippines, and Canada. We’re getting much more relaxed about talking in front of an audience and I would dare to say we actually enjoyed it. I got to talk about ECCE in Canada and infused it with stories from my first work experience at Great Beginning (yikes!) and of course Pooh Corner <3.

The day before that Becky and I gave a presentation to our class, we compared the ECCE workforce in Belize and Germany. It was interesting to read up on Germany, especially the difference between the former East and West Germany. But unfortunately my arm is getting worse again, I have to stop using the computer all day, so I won’t go into details about how they conceptualized ECCE today… Maybe another day. Or I can send you my paper.

That’s right. The paper. That’s what I should be working on right now. BEFORE going out for ice cream.

I’m getting another cold. I’m blaming the airconditioning. Is it ever silly to get 2 colds in Malta.