First and foremost, happy birthday to the most amazing mother a man could ask for, the infamous Lisa Miller! A day doesn’t go by when I don’t think about you over here and I hope that your day was as wonderful as you. I am sad that I missed spending today with you, but to look at the glass half full, next year I will be coming home in a year and the year after I will be home the next month so try to look at it like that. I am looking forward to talking to you on the phone when you call in about a half hour.
A lot has happened in the last two weeks after site visit. We went through mountain bike training and now have our TREK mountain bikes. Model school has officially started. It’s basically a summer school that we get to hone our teaching skills in before heading to post. The first week we just observed classrooms that other Volunteers and trainers were teaching to see classroom management skills, pace, etc. Once week two hit, we would be the teachers. In other words, baptism by fire. The principal literally said that to us on our first day of teaching, in French of course. And since I’m going to a Francophone region guess which language I’ll be teaching in?
I could vent for awhile about teaching already and I’ve only had four periods. It’s hard enough to be teaching for your first time, but when you have to do it in a language that you aren’t all that comfortable with yet it ups the degree of difficulty by about 1000%. I’m basically just reading out of a textbook that the head of the ICT dept has put together, in badly pronounced French of course. My language teacher said to use simple phrases, but that isn’t really possible when you’re using computer vocabulary. The first day was a lot worse than the second, but that was mainly due to the fact that one of my classes kept calling me le blanc instead of Mr. Miller. I’ve reflected on it since though and besides the le blanc comments they really weren’t that bad. I was just the teacher that I hated in college, who was foreign and had a very hard to understand accent so you could barely tell what they were trying to teach you. I think both sides are just frustrated because of a lack of communication. And you feel pretty horrible as a teacher when the student asks a question and you don’t even know what he/she is asking. I’m trying to stay optimistic, but it’s hard. We also don’t have enough computers for everyone and only get one hour a week in the computer lab so I’m not sure how much I am actually going to be able to teach these kids about using computers. I can teach them computer theory for three hours a week, but how is that going to help them actually use a computer? Starting to get negative so I’ll just end that thought.
As most of you saw on Facebook, I managed to lose not just one bucket, but two in the well on Sunday. The rope slipped out of my hand on the first and it was my fellow trainee and neighbor Sterling’s so I felt pretty bad about it. I fashioned my own rope to my bucket and told her that I would fill her buckets with mine. After about one or two dips, the handle came off and my bucket decided to join hers. A neighborhood kid has since shimmied down the well and retrieved Sterling’s, but our bucket remains AWOL. I’m putting it on the milk cartons next week, oh wait we only have powdered milk here.
EDIT: This morning I found my handle-less bucket lying next to the well. All is right in the world.
So there is a mouse in my room. For the first month when I would lock my door at night there would be something pushing from the outside and there would be wood shavings outside my door in the mornings. When I asked my host brother about it he said it was la souris (the mouse) trying to get in. Sometime after that I started hearing weird noises throughout the night and was convinced he had gotten in. Well, I found the little sucker yesterday hiding behind my water jugs. I went to grab a shoe and in the split second that took he was off to a different part of my room. My room isn’t very big so I looked for him for awhile but he was dodging me pretty good. No wonder Jerry was always smarter than Tom.
Heard him again tonight by the giant bag of rice I still have from drying my electronics. I chased him to behind my hiking back and positioned myself for the strike. Moved my hiking bag and he jetted past me towards the corner yet again. Never could find him, but I just heard him back behind the water jugs. He’s really little so I don’t really want to kill him I just want to herd him out so he can bother somebody else. He seriously was knocking over empty water bottles last night and I pictured him sticking his tongue out at me while he did it.
Time for bed since I am going for a 6AM run tomorrow. Four more classes and the week is over. We are having a party for the July birthdays this Saturday. Sunday we are supposed to be playing basketball against some Cameroonian students so that should be fun/interesting. Hope to catch up with some of you on the Interweb this weekend.
Stay classy
MMM
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