Back from Faith Academy Orientation

by Seth

Caliraya Retreat Center

We spent the last week getting our New Staff Orientation at Faith Academy, as well as our all-staff orientation at the Staff Retreat by a lake a couple hours away from Manila, up in the mountains. It has been very good to meet with administrators, meet other new teachers and their families, and to meet staff members who have been at Faith for many years.

We have also met some teachers who live in the same neighborhood as we do, and who are willing to offer us rides to school, at least sometimes. This, combined with the availability of the school vans should be sufficient to take care of our transportation needs for getting to and from school. And the public transportation options are so numerous (and readily available) that we may not need any sort of vehicle at all, at least not for this first year. We may still purchase a scooter if we decide it would be good to have around, but otherwise we do not see a need to have our own vehicle right now.

We also now have a much clearer picture of our classes, our class schedules, some of the students we can expect to see in class (starting on Thursday), and the size of our classes. As a somewhat amusing side note, I will likely have mostly fairly small class sizes for my Physics classes, probably partly because the students do not recognize my name (but also because the school made some changes to the Physics classes being offered this year, compared to last year). In any case, I'm kind of looking forward to having fairly small classes, allowing me the opportunity to really build into the lives of those students.

Well, it's about time for bed right now. We are heading to the mall tomorrow after church to buy some Filipino cell phones (a very important thing for communication around here). Let's hope our shopping goes well!