Of the Days Annoyances These: the First Week of Classes

I have sort of met all my classes at this point.  Apparently no one shows up the first week, or expects anyone to teach.  Also, sometimes people take the keys to the lab and disappear with them five minutes before my class is supposed to start, so I can't start until 20 minutes late because I am hunting the keys, by which time the students, as is really their prerogative, have disappeared.

Keys in Tanzania: never not an exasperating and poorly managed situation.

Today I made the mistake of showing up early, when will I ever learn, for a 7:30 class, had to wait for the registrar's secretary to arrive so I could get the keys to the computer office and try a bunch of the unlabeled keys there to see which opened the lab.  Exactly 3 students appeared for class, so I told them to come back next period and bring all their friends.  I supposedly have a class this afternoon, but I have also heard that there are supplementary exams, whatever those are, during that class period.  So I'm not holding my breath.  At least no one cares if I just go back to my house, which is good for my blood pressure, particularly on exasperating mornings like this when clearly the only response to the world is to go drink coffee in the privacy of my home and play violent computer games until calm.

On the plus side, my multimedia students seemed somewhat excited when I met them.  Apparently my predecessor told them about me, and they loved my predecessor and have told me they expect excellent teaching from me as well.  Well, maybe that's a plus. No pressure or anything.

edited to add:  about 20 students came to the afternoon class, so I decided to just lecture them because clearly they are the ones who care.  It was fun.  This was the multimedia class, so I talked about the project they'll be doing over the semester (I'm making them make music videos), talked about the necessity of planning a concept and not letting the media overwhelm the message, and then showed them a bunch of my favorite anime music videos as examples to give them ideas of what was possible.  I'm not sure what they thought, but I had fun, and the young man who likes to carry my projector for me and talk to me (I need to be careful he doesn't start hitting on me) said that they were not used to teachers who made them create things, and I think he said it like he thought it was a good thing.  So that was nice.