After a week of hard work, my assistant and I made our classroom look like this

Yesterday was the first day back with the students… or most of them.  This is the first year that I’ve had seven students absent on the first day! I’m supposed to have 19 students this year and only 12 showed up. This meant that the first day went very quiet and smooth.

I can’t wait all of my other third graders!

Over the past week my classroom went from this:

Actually I took this last summer, but this summer the only difference was that the shelves were on the other side of the room.

To this:

and this:

In other Venezuelan news, I heard that two people I know were in an armed robbery this weekend just down the street from my apartment! Yikes! It brought up memories of the time I was in an attempted armed robbery less than a year ago on the other side of town. Yippe, the one over the weekend was literally two blocks from my apartment…

So just a little refresher about what to do in case of an armed robbery in Venezuela… since things are expected to get heated in the next few months:

1. Cooperate- give them the phone, money, jewelry, etc
2. Stay Calm- people with guns tend to be nervous and you don’t want to make them more nervous.
3. Don’t make eye contact- sometimes this makes bad guys think you can identify them so they get even more nervous.
4. Distance is key- Try to stay as far away from them as possible so you are a more difficult target.

At least this is what I’ve been told in various security briefings.

Here are a couple links to read up on it more (I feel that if I am better prepared then I might freak out less than I did last time):

How to survive an armed robbery

Stay Calm During a Robbery

Here is a handy video for those visual learners out there:

Stay safe people!