27. Activity night

On Thursday we had a fun night.  Thanks to Brooke for sharing her pictures with me.  The students at Rosendal Ungdomskule are somewhat spoiled I would say.  I don't mean that in a bad way.  They just are.  We had an activity night.  So all 9 of us student teachers went over to Rosendal at 7:15 to plan the night's activities.  At 7:30, the teachers had prepared hamburgers for us and we were talking and playing ping pong with the students.

It was funny because the tables were segregated.  I mean, what can you expect though.  These are middle school boys and girls.

25: Return again

After the weekend trip to Oslo we made it back to Rosendal.  The bus ride was long.  It was also very beautiful.

Rosendal in the morning

I would like to focus on a teaching strategy for today.  This was one of the teaching strategies that was done in the English class today.  Today was the second day that we have been on the topic of global warming so they are somewhat accustomed to the words and the vocabulary that is associated with the idea.  So in order to organize somewhat all of these vocabulary words the pupils were asked to make ‘mind maps.’  A mind map is on a piece of paper where it has the main idea in the center of the paper: Global Warming.  Then attached to that will be other words: climate change, recycling, etc.  Then words could be attached to those words.  Recycling paper or recycling plastic.  It was a good way to see what they students were understanding about the text that they were reading.  If there was a word that I was particularly impressed by (ignorant) then I could ask the student what the word means or how does it fit in where ever it is.  Students were also encouraged to discuss their thoughts about global warming with their partners and the map was a good reminder of things to remember and talk about.

It was nice to get a ride home from school today from Stein.  He just happened to be at the Husnes shopping center when we were walking to the bus station.  Brooke and I were very happy to see him.  Sarah also got a ride since she got there just in time.  We had a pleasant conversation and the drive didn't seem like it took that long.

24c: Oslo - Day 3 - Sunday

Nate woke up and cooked breakfast.  He cooked 6 eggs and a bunch of bacon and shared it with me.  After, I ran to the bus stop to see what time the bus would come so that we wouldn’t miss the bus to go to the center of the city and to go to church. Here is the schedule of the bus times:

Advertisement on the metro

Nate, Sarah, Julia, Megan and I left the house and started on our way to church.  We rode the bus and then made our way onto the metro.  Pretty quick after I got on the metro I noticed that there was this lady that was looking at me.  There was something familiar about the way that the girl looked.  A little while into the trip somebody talked.  The lady was going to church with her husband just like we were.  It was pretty funny that I could tell that she was going to church right about the time that we got on the train.  We had a nice little conversation and then followed them off the metro and then up the street up to church.  It was nice that we had run into them because then we were led to church rather than trying to find it.  We would have found it but this was so much easier.

24b: Oslo - Day 2

Since I had already been to all of the museums I didn’t have anyone to hangout with for most of the day.  All of the others girl do other things on Friday and so they still wanted to go to those museums.  I don’t blame them.  I enjoyed going to the museums.  So I was there all by myself.  I decided that I was going to go down to the dock and check out the place there.  My Oslo Card was still good so I used that to get on a bus there.

24a: Oslo - Norwegian museums

We left late on Thursday night (11:15 pm) to go to Oslo. We were on the bus forever.  After transferring buses 2 times we were finally it to Oslo at about 7 am.  I found that the more comfortable way to travel was laying sideways on two seats.  Then I would put my back on those two seats with my head towards the window and feet towards the aisle.  Then put my beanie on with my music plugged in and hope for the best.

There have been multiple times that I have taken long bus rides and they have always been the same.  I feel like I am on the bus forever.  If I try and sleep normal sitting it usually doesn’t work.  I need to lay across the two seats and try that.  The interesting thing is that I keep forgetting that each time I get on a new bus.

We waited around a little bit in the bus station because we really weren’t sure what to do.  Nobody was really taking charge either.  Also we all didn’t have to do the same thing.  We did have a little bit of time to figure out what we wanted to do though since there aren’t many things open at 7 am.

23: Thursday

I really enjoyed my English class today.  We talked about global warming which was a topic that Matte said that she didn’t know that much about.  So I was a big help today.  Matte also talked about how having me in the classroom made her be more careful with English and making sure that she was speaking grammatically correct.  We will continue to talk about global warming for the next week.

The other thing that I liked about Matte’s class is that it was more typical of an American classroom.  It didn’t seem that there were students that were goofing off during instruction.  Matte also waited for the students to quiet down before she started to teach.  She demanded their attention and because she demanded they gave her their attention.  I thought it was interesting how much different the students are given a different teacher because the students aren’t very different given a different subject from the same teacher.

22: Testing, Biking

Selfie by the Fjord

Today the 10th graders had a math test like the whole day.  I still have a bunch of questions about it that hopefully I will be able to ask Erlend tomorrow.  Wednesdays always ends late because of 'outdoor education' at the end.  So today ended by having the students training by running around the track and other running exercises.

Upon arriving home I decided that I wanted to go on a bike ride because I like riding bikes better than I like running.  So that is what I did.

21: Back to School

Today was a preparation day for the math term test tomorrow.  It was long.  That was the only thing planned for the day.  So for the last 25 minutes of the day Erlend decided that he was going to put on a Donald Duck cartoon.  It was Donald Duck in Numberland or something like that.  The video talked about how mathematics is in everyday life, specifically in music and in nature.  Looking around I found that most of the students were engaged in the cartoon.

The other thing that was interesting in the review was that I learned how students are taught about canceling things out if there are fractions.  The kids were really good at prime factorization of numbers.  That is an easy way to reduce a fraction because there are only prime numbers in that factorization.  Then you just cancel all the same factors.

That touches on the teaching strategy that students are able to write and then rewrite expressions in different ways.  They then understand that sometimes it makes more sense to write an expression in another way.  For example: 10 is 10 or it is 2+8 or 2 x 5 or any number of things.  It just depends on the rest of the expression that you would really want to know the best way to express the number.

After school we played volleyball first with Stein and some students from his school.  That was fun and fairly intense.  Everybody really seemed to have a good time.  Then at 9:45 we played volleyball again with an older group.  That was also really fun.  I was really happy with how I played.  I got some good blocks and some good spikes.  Goals achieved.  I also scared some people by how hard I hit the ball when I spiked it.

20h: Easter Week - Sunday - Krakow, Bergen, Rosendal

Happy Easter.  Again we were kind of pressed to get to the bus station since we weren’t exactly sure about things getting to the airport and what not.  We grabbed the plate with two rolls and I downed a cup of milk and then we were off.  The offices at the bus station were all closed and there weren’t many people around to ask for help.  But we found the bus number that we needed and the machine that we could buy tickets from.  The machine was kind of dumb and wouldn’t take the 10 zloty bills the first time.  This caused Kylie and Ashley to be really stressed.  We eventually did buy our tickets and get on the bus with plenty of time to spare.

20g: Easter Week - Saturday - Krakow

Famous Polish statue in Old Town

It was nice to be able to wake up and then not be rushed to get on a bus.  This time we were able to eat breakfast and really enjoy it.  Today we went on a walking tour in the morning and then on a Jewish quarter tour in the afternoon.  It was a lot of walking.  According to my Jawbone we walked about 14 miles today.  We were pretty tired.

To be honest I don’t remember much of what was shared in either tour.  It would have been nice to have seen Schindler’s List before going on the Jewish Quarter tour because that was referenced a bunch in the tour.  It was nice to learn about the dragon of Krakow in the first tour.  There was this cool statue of a dragon that literally breathes fire that Nika (tour guide) explained the legend behind.

20f: Easter Week - Friday - Krakow, Auschwitz

Today was our first (full) day in Krakow, Poland.  We had to wake up early in order to get on a bus to go to Auschwitz.  I was having a nightmare and I realized it so I just woke up.  Luckily it was like 7:25 and so I was only waking up like 10 minutes before my alarm.  I was dreaming that I was teaching but then whatever lesson I was teaching I hadn’t prepared well and things weren’t organized and it was just horrible.  Woke up and got ready super quick and then went upstairs for breakfast and get our premade lunch.  We had the cocoa puffs again with milk but we really had to eat and run.  We also had to take the lunch (a normal roll with ham and cheese and a sweet roll) and put it together hastily.  Then we were off to the races to get to the bus station.

We hurry to the train station/mall and then realize that we needed to keep going through and actually find the bus station.  By the time we find the Kassa it is 8:30 which is the time that the micro-bus leaves.  So I paid for tickets on the 9:00 bus and everything was cheeky-pookie.  We got on the bus and on the way there a couple people that had to stand.  The guy and girl nearest to me played the 20 questions game.  I ended up taking a nap and listening to music and playing the game flow free for a while.

20e: Easter Week - Thursday - Ostrava, Krakow

After waking up we ate our small breakfast that we had bought the previous day in the supermarket in Prague.  I enjoyed my sweet rolls with jam and tangerines.  We got checked out of the hotel and then were off and on our way.  We weren’t really sure about the buses so we just walked from the hotel back to the city center.  Then we looked around for a grocery store for food and they were nowhere to be seen.  We decided that there would be food at the train station so that was our new goal.  Get to the train station.  We looked at the signs by the bus station and found a route that would work.  But then another bus came and it had the name of the train station on it so we ended up just taking that bus instead.

We get to the train station and Ashley goes up to the cashier and asks for information.  The woman then says, “Opposite kassa” a bunch of times getting louder each time she says it.  Ashley didn’t know what she was meaning but I got it.  She was saying, “Opposite register” so I pulled Ashley aside and we went to the place we needed to.

20d: Easter Week - Wednesday - Prague, Ostrava

The key to the luggage room. (So that it is
easy to find and hold onto) 

We woke up and had the cocoa puffs and the orange juice again this morning.  It is just so easy.  We also got our sandwiches from the hostel and put everything in the luggage room because we had to check out of our room.

Today was the day that we had the walking tour with Derek.  But before that we walked to the Old Town Square and went to the top of the tower that they have there.  It was cool to be able to see all the different places that we had been for the past two days all laid out with distances.  It was cool.  I think there are some pretty good pictures from that morning.  I was concerned though.  My iPhone turned off and wouldn’t wake up.  Then even when I plugged in my mobile charger it didn’t do anything.  So after the tower we stopped at a gift shop on the way back to the hostel and got a postcard and then I stayed at the hostel to get my phone to charge.  Kylie and Ashley went to the post office to send postcards.  It was at this time that we meet these two Americans that were traveling Europe after graduating from college.  They had already been traveling for 3 months and were hoping to travel for another 3 months.  I think that that would be really hard to do.  It is a taxing thing to continually stay in hostels and always be on the road with a big backpack because you know that they have a big backpack since they have been gone for so long.