Today during my first period French class the lights went out. To me, this came at an opportune moment. I was dreading answering questions on a French text at 8:30 in the morning, especially after a notsogreat night's sleep.
We sat in the dark for a couple minutes debating what to do next, when a teacher walked in and told us we needed to evacuate the building. Not sure what was going on, but not thinking anything serious had happened, I packed up my bag and headed outside to the basketball courts with the rest of my class. The entire high school was scattered around the various outdoor fields on the other side of campus. It was kind of fun to start out with. We sat around, talked, laughed. When the fire trucks started arriving though, I finally realized that despite all the unorganized confusion, this might actually be serious. 5 trucks showed up, yes 5. Followed by police cars. This got the students really excited, everyone started taking pictures and calling their parents to see if they could go home at lunch time, if their school was burnt down by then. I have to admit, I got a little excited to, when I saw the pompiers, firemen, raise up their ladders to look in the third floor windows. But it was just that. They looked in the windows, and lowered back down. Why they couldn't have just walked into the perfectly safe (and not burning) building is beyond me...but it looked really cool, so I went with it.
However, after that, I was done with the show. It was cold, and we had been waiting over an hour outside. I was also shocked by the lack of organization. Kids were running around everywhere, not staying with their classes at all. Some of them even got bored and walked right back into the "unsafe" buildings to hang out where it was warmer. The teachers never counted or bothered to check if all the students had made it out and were safe. No one was quiet for as much as a minute. It was utter chaos.
Thirty minutes later, with frozen feet, we were all finally allowed to go back to class. I am still not exactly sure what the issue was, but Capucine explained that she thought a fuse had burst somewhere on the first floor and they were just having electrical problems. It was an experience, thats for sure.
That night, when I got home, the students had already created a facebook group in honor of the day: "Si toi aussi t'aurais bien voulu que le lycée flambe ce matin..." or "If you too were hoping that the high school would burn down this morning..." I joined. Got to preserve the good memories somehow, right?
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LOL! I miss the disorderliness of Peru. One day a forgot a book outside and asked a teacher if I could get it she said if I needed to smoke I said no and she said I couldn't go outside. Then when I said I did have to smoke she said I could go. When I got back from retrieving my book "smoking" my sis says I should have just left
ReplyDeletehaha...my favorite part here, is that all the smokers hang out in frong of the kindergarten classrooms, so last week the teachers put up these big anti-smoking posters in the windows, it is the funniest thing because youve got probably somewhere around 30 people at a time out there in front of the sings lighting up, good stuff
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