Friday, August 22, 2008

Almost midterms, again...

Okay so I know that its actually been a really long time since the last blog….so ill sort of try to catch everybody up. A lot has been going on, but then again a lot is the same as usual…ssoooo right now were on the second term, summer break (or I guess its winter here) has passed and after the pain of grading and writing report cards BY HAND and doing the averages NOT ON ExceL, I got to head up north and we climbed mt meru in arusha and it was a lot of fun and was BEAUTIFUL. We reached the peak at 6 am-ish so the whole way up we had amazing view of a huge mountain, I later found out was kilimanjaro. Now, when we started the trip I knew it was kili, but when leaving for the summit at 2 am with not any sleep and not much oxygen I didn’t really think about it… Well it was cold and fun. And I ate some pizza in Arusha. That was good.
Now back to grading. Most things here, I really am not bothered by, bucket baths, I don’t really have a water issue, not really an electricity isssu, but im pretty sure that even with alll the modern technology in the world I would still hate grading. Its like having to stay inside on a snowday. And yes, I do have a computer, but I dropped it, and the charger wasn’t working, and by not working I mean I had to hold it into the computer so that it would charge, therefore I never charged it. Now I fixed that. But would have been nice to have a computer for grading, though then I would have felt bad if it had taken me less time than my Tanzanian friends, but it probabbly would have still taken long bc I did all the averages wrong or not the “tanzanian” way the first time. Now I know. So maybe next time grading will be less painful.
So towards the end of last term I started hanging out in the village a lot more. It s nice to get a break from the school bubble and theres always something new for me to learn. And there are a couple families that Ive known for a while but its nice spending more time with them now. Like this one fam that has a lil chai shop near the market area, on Sundays before church, we all make chapati together so that is fun and most people think its funny that I can/cant really roll out the chapati all that well. (chapati are like tortilla but thicker and tastier and probably way more bad for you).
Im trying to think of a funny story that happened lately, but im kind of in school mode…which can be pretty funny too. Oh, so I really really like my students. They are hilariious most of the time, and first semester I think I kept checking my self to sort of be more conservative and more “teacher-like”….well, I let a little looser lately and my students have gotten to know my personality,,,, which is fine. Except I know my form one students way too well considering I teach them 3 subjects. Soo we had some little respect issues recently, which I pretty much blame on myself. Mostly I didn’t really see it coming , well I sort of did, but im not that big on complete control, so it didn’t really bother me. And then It did. Also then my students started calling me dada. Which means sister, which I didn’t really catch onto or know that it was not okay. But then I sort of realized it wasn’t so I talked to one of my friends in the village and she was like yay, they should probly stop that. So when I had a little talk with one of my students. She totally knew that it wasn’t okay once I called her out on it. This really pissed me off because I knew then that they knew that I didn’t know it wasn’t okay. So we had a little chat. Me and my form ones. I didn’t know I could sound so “ticked off teacher sounding” but I did. Actually, im kind of proud of it. So it worked. That and the fact that they did not get their tests back for a few weeks which was the punishment. They really wanted their tests back. Some of them I don’t know why they want their tests back... And I sort of took things down a notch in the classrooom I think when I have too much energy it kind of instigates things so recently things are much better. PS. I used to sort of instigate things when class got boring, probably led to some of the issues too. So that is my failure/I learned something now and its gonna be okay story. Maybe some of you teacher ppl can relate/think duh Bev I could have told you that was coming.
More school things…sorry, I live there so even if I try not to my life revolves around it. OLYMPICS. I love the olympics at home. I would like to watch them more here. Soooooo we had our own little “School Olympics” and everyone in the school was involved. It was super fun and low key and we had it on 08-08-08 (which was a holiday here w/ no school. Is it a holiday at home? We also had a day off on 07-07 FYI). So we just had a few events, net ball, football, and some random running races, relays etc, the high jump and long jump (the dirt here is somewhat sandy, so is not really hard to make a sand pit). Then they got little medals made out of paper which were kind of sad looking but I think they loved them anyway. So that was a highlight of lately.
Ohhhh one more school thing. Lots of the teachers are leaving. They are going to study. If they teach for 2 years the govt will pay for their university. Good for them. Sad for me. My friends are leaving me. Oh well the new teachers will prob be cool too.What else….
Got to go to a wedding of one of the families I chill w/ a lot in the village. It was Sooooo fun. I LOVE DANCING. We got to dance from one village to the next which was about 1.5 miles away (the bride moved to live w her hubby who lived in the next village so after the ceremony that s where we went. Then when we got there we got to dance even more until the football game in the afternoon. That was alos a very fun time. Again. I love dancing. Weill internet time is almost up.OHHH and I shaved my head. Im not crazy. Seriously. Its fun to do scary things almost like bungee jumping. I don’t know if peace corps lets us do that. I was scared. But it wasn’t a bad decision. Hope all is well at home. Thanks for the letters/ packages shout out to all of you!!!!!!!!oh and bye bye Bry Bry if you re reading this !!!!!!