This is a guide for my family and friends about my life as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Cape Verde, Africa. I teach English as foreign language to high school students in Boa Vista, Cape Verde. Also as a disclaimer, the comments expressed here are solely of the author and do not represent the United States Peace Corps, the American Government, or any other governing body.

Thursday, November 30, 2006

So today is December 1st. "It's coming on Christmas, they're cutting down trees..." How are those lines at the Gap? The full shopping malls and oh the traffic? It's things like that I absolutely DO NOT miss. I remember just before I left to come here my mother and I were standing in an unorganized line at the Gap. I was so frustrated with the lack of attention to how things were being run I actually said to my mother "I hate this place, this country. I can't wait to get out of here. Be in a place where there will be no lines anywhere." Yes it may be hard to be in a foreign country where they don't speak my language and it's dusty, etc. But I don't have to sit in traffic everyday, stop listening to the radio because they play crap Christmas music, look for a parking space, wait in line 30 minutes for a cheeseburger (mmm cheeseburgers....) or fight the mean lady in the store for the last shirt that's 25% off the original price. Oh thank goodness for small favors. It's interesting, because I haven't heard a breath about Christmas here. And I am in a Christian country. But there are no commercials, no signs, no rediculous advertisments, nothing. I find that in a country like this that doesn't have that much to begin with, can't have that much to give away either. Gift giving doesn't strike me as something that is as widely done as in America or Europe. Which leads me to the fascinating observations on socio-economic situations here in Sal Rei, Boa Vista.

There is a distinction between the classes here, something I had yet to really see here in Cape Verde. I guess it shouldn't surprise me, what with all the tourism and such. But I have noticed that it breaks down like this: first there are the Italian migrants, who have come to live here and brought with them European money that stretches very far. They have opened up hotels, retaurants and other tourist attractions and are living very well on money brought in from outside, as well as the money earned from European tourists. The next level are Cape Verdeans who work for the government. People like Paolo who can afford to take two people out to lobster and steak dinners (sidebar: yes he took us out again last night and I ate my first steak in 6 months. It was another bizarre experience but not really the point here). They are the elite Cape Verdeans, able to live comfortably and especially on an island which offers the finer things in life, they can indulge once in a while. The next level I would estimate to be the store owners, teachers, and people like Leland's counter part Iva, who runs all the Youth Centers on the islands. The teachers in thic country get paid remarkably well, as it is a sort of status to have completed enough education to be able to teach. It requires a college teaching degree available here at the institutes of higher education on two other islands. Iva, as well as my counterpart and the director of the high school Denise, have both received their educations in Portugal and have come back to jobs that are slightly above the teachers and store owners, but in the same general category. Next, are the slightly poorer Cape Verdeans. The people who are manual laborers. Our maid, for example, or the fisherman. This category also includes the women who are vendors at the market. Some of them come from the North and have little vegetable gardens from which they bring small items to sell. Others have managed to find a way to import other fruits and vegetables, such as oranges and grapes. The final category is (like so many countries, the US included) the immigrant workers. I was surprised to see how many people come from West Africa to work here. They work in odd little construction jobs when they can. It is a fairly good market for that here because of all the tourism and other construction that is going on here at the moment. They all seem to live in an area that is slightly inland of Sal Rei, and looks like (for lack of a better term) the ghetto. It truely is tough living in those parts. You can always tell who has migrated from the continent. They are much darker in color, and look stereotypically African. We have noticed that Cape Verdeans themselves are actually fairly light. You can tell there has long been a European mix in the gene pool. Anyway, so as Peace Corps volunteers, we have found ourselves on the slightly higher end of the food chain as people who would actually be getting paid in our position would be doing quite well. We live off of about $350-$400 a month, which does not sound like much to you I am sure. But things here are relatively cheap. But now you know why I have not spent $15 on a steak myself (that's almost a weeks worth of groceries!!), and probably never will while I am here. This money is used to pay for our utilities each month (gas, water, electric) and food mostly. We spend about $20-30 at the grocery store and market per week. So it is plenty for us to live on here. We struggle a little at the end of the period, but who doesn't? And we are still paying for large items such as furniature and the like. So after all the settling-in is done, we should be fairly steady.

So there's a little idea of the financial life a Peace Corps volunteer. Happy shopping :)

Monday, November 27, 2006

Weekend was interesting. Sometimes we have those, other times it's just basically sit around and read or watch some DVDs. But this weekend we actually had some things to do. Ok, background info: the Camara is the local governing body here, and each zone has one. On the island of Santiago, there are several Camaras because there are several zones. I am not sure how they split the zones on each island, but it has to do with general population I think. Think of the zones as similar to counties. Boa Vista (my island) only has one Camara because the population here is so small and there aren't very many towns other than Vila, where I live. The Camara functions similar to a state-run government system. There is a president of every Camara and his position is somewhat similar to the mayor of different towns in the US. Here where there is only one Camara, however, the president's position is similar to that of the governor of the state, as his governing body pretty much runs this whole island and all 4,000 people on it. Yes, there are only 4,000 people on this whole island.

Anyway, most community development volunteers work closely with the local Camaras as they are able to get funding and provide the most help through this governing body. Leland's job is an exception, he works mostly through and at the Youth Center, but the two are very closely connected. So we know a lot of people in the Camara. One person who has been friendly and very helpful to us since we got here works for the Camara and his project/job is to do a complete overhaul of all the Youth Centers on the island. His name is Paolo. There is a Youth Center in almost every town. So here, that's about 5, plus two that are currently being built in other small towns. So needless to say, we see him a lot. Friday night he invited Leland and me to dinner (as he was at the dinner party we threw at our house). We went out to a very nice restaurant which was a little bit of a treat for us. Ever since we moved out of the hotel, we don't go out to eat ever because it's so expensive. Paolo is the sort of person who is in control of every situation. Not in a bad way, but in that protective-I-want-everything-to-be-right-for-you type of way. So he order our dinners for us, which ended up being lobster. First time Leland and I had lobster on this island and it was very good. He apparently got too impatient waiting for me to take all the meat out of my lobster, so he ended up deshelling it all and placing it back on my plate. If I hadn't been three glasses of wine in by that time, I would have been a little grossed out. After dinner we went to a rooftop restaurant where there was a band playing (the only band here, they play everywhere) and the President of the Camara was there. Paolo knew and greeted everyone. But the President's situation made me laugh a little. He was sitting at a fairly long table and on his right there were three pretty young Italian (aka white) women sitting and on his left were thuggish looking African men (aka body guard type people). I had to have a giggle about this because it just made me realize that no matter where you are, people in governmental power are all the same (or you can draw your own conclusions here :). Anyway we went to another bar after that where Paolo told me that his marriage and therefore his life was in trouble because of me. I laughed it off like I laugh off every ridiculous attempt to hit on me and am now avoiding him for a little while as per what I have found to be the best method. So that was fun.

Saturday night Leland and I went to Mazurka, the only discotequa on the island. This is only the second time we've been there because the place doesn't open until midnight and that's simply just too late for me anyway. So I stayed up, and we went. And it was nuts. Have you ever seen the second Matrix movie (I think it's the second one) where they're in that underground city and there's this techno-rave like dance going on? Yeah this is what that place was like. Techno pounding, which is quite irritating dance music and people just grinding and sweating on the dance floor. My favorite however, was the big bus that brought all the tourists (young and old!) who are staying in one of the nicest resorts here in town called the Marine Club. They have their own bus, I thought it was funny. We were there until about 4am, but it was fun.

On a separate note, I dreamt about my sister last night. I miss everyone very much, don't get me wrong. And some days are worse than others. But if you had to ask me who the one person was I missed the most, my answer would immediately be Natasha. So needless to say, after the dream, I woke up a little depressed and missed her more than ever. Anyway, this week will be focused on AIDS as December 1st is World AIDS day, and this Saturday is our race. So that's all for now, happy Monday!

Friday, November 24, 2006

Another week has gone by, and we are but four weeks away from the end of the trimester. Four weeks away from the end of the first third of the school year. I cannot believe how time has passed.

I particulary feared for yesterday to come, as it was Thanksgiving and the first time in my entire life I was not going to be spending it at home with my family. I have been without a phone for the past three weeks, and therefore have not been able to speak to them either which has caused me more pain than I initially realized. But between Leland and I we managed to have a very good day yesterday, considering the circumstances. Leland was able to solve my phone situation, bless him, and I was able to talk to my family through the internet of all things with a headpiece at a very reasonable price. This was such a blessing to me. It was so good to hear my family's voices and on a day that had meant so much to me as a symbol of familial unity.

Well Leland and I bought our halves of a chicken each, marinated them the way we each wanted and baked them. Let me just take a moment to tell you about our stove/oven. It is gas, which on the stove is no real problem for me; I am used to this, although the lowest setting on the dial is not acutally low, but a high-medium temperature which makes simmering stuff very difficult. But a gas oven with the flame actually inside is something very new to me. It makes cooking slightly difficult because so much heat comes from the bottom of the oven where the flames are and might I say, slightly exposed in some areas as is normal I guess. Also, the lowest setting on the oven is 180 degrees Centigrade, which is just under, I beileve, 375 F. Which is rediculous in itself. So the fitted pan I used in my attempt to make roast potatoes which weren't all that bad, but they were far from the quality of my mother's and therefore MILES from the quality of my grandmother's. But hey, I tried. So after I finished the roast potatoes, I decided to place the chicken on a piece of foil and then on the fitted rack. I figured that becuase the bottom of pans get so hot, I didn't want the bottom of the chicken to stick to the pan it was on, so the logical choice was tin foil. Hind sight, as they say, is 20/20. My intentions were good, but had I been thinking all the way through the business, I would have cleaned the fitted pan that the roast potatoes had been in, and placed that under the tin foil contraption. But I didn't. When Leland came back from teaching his class the chicken had just been placed in the oven and everything was going fine until we heard the little drips of chicken fat sliding off the tin foil and sizzling on the bottom of the oven. It wasn't long until so much fat had dripped off that it was now on the verge of lighting on fire from the flames below. And then it did light on fire, and there was a very pretty image through the little window of our oven. But that's where the fun stopped as we didn't really want to get blown up, nor burn down our entire apartment building as that would have been MOST inconvenient! But the chicken was done anyway, so the oven (after the fire display) was immediately turned off and we enjoyed our large pices of chicken with mashed potatoes, roast potatoes, corn and gravy. Leland and I treated ourselves to some fruit at the market so we had grapes and watermelon for dessert, along with the chocolate chip cookies I was able to make thanks to my dear mother :)

Speaking of chocolate chip cookies, no one really has those here and the package of mix I had made 2 dozen which Leland and I don't at all need to eat so I decided to take a dozen to my 11th grade class yesterday. I have only twelve students so it was perfect. The grammar lesson was the passive voice and as that is used in writing recipes, I looked up the actual recipe for chocolate chip cookies online (as the mix I had been sent would not suffice as an ingredient they could actually get here) and I served the cookies while teaching them the recipe at the same time. They loved the cookies and seemed stunned when I told them I baked them myself. Of course I didn't tell them that I had a lot of help from Betty Crocker and that the recipe I was giving them and they were eagerly writing down wasn't exactly the cookies I had served them. But it's all good, and I was happy that they enjoyed them just the same.

Anyway, that was my exciting day yesterday that was more pleasant than I had originally feared, which made it all the more enjoyable. The only sadness brought to the day was the passing of a very dear, but very sick aunt. I am sorry for mine and my family's loss and that it was experienced on a day of such usual joy and familial happiness. She will be missed, and it is now best to look back on the days we spent with her, especially the entire of last summer that she spent with my family in Phoenix. She was there when I left to come here and we enjoyed her company greatly. But she is now at peace.

Bom fin de semana nha gente :)

Thursday, November 23, 2006

There is a saying here: N ka ten forca. It literally means "I don't have the strength." I have come to understand that it actually implies something along the lines of "I don't feel like it" or "I don't have the energy to do this." My physical strength has been waning this past week, though I have not been able to attribute it to anything in particular. I have not been able to get through the day without a lengthy nap, which is odd considering that I sleep very well most nights. I am fatigued, and while my metal strength seems as strong as ever, it had appeared as though I had little to blame on my downward motion of my physical state of being. It has perplexed my mind these past few days which has led me to contimplate its origins. While I have long since been the most fit person in my family, I believe that my endurance here is stronger than it has been in a while. I walk everywhere, and when calculated out, it tends to be about an hour's worth of walk a day. And the weekends are not without the occassional swim in the ocean.

My next thought went to the heat. It is still scortching hot here, and I spend most of my day sweating. But being an Arizona girl, this doesn't concern me much either. As to the sweating, I thought I might be a victim of dehydration, but Leland and I find that we have to fill up our 7 liter water filter almost every day to keep up with out water consumption. We are rarely without our trusty Nalgene bottles :)

After this I considered the food, and that I was perhaps malnourished. But how could it be so? The food may be plain, but I rarely find that I lack one of the major food groups (except fruit because it's so darn expensive, but I eat a lot of jam which I figure makes up for almost none of it, but hey what can you do?). I try and and eat as many different colors of vegetables as possible and make a conscious effort to take my vitamins. So that can't be it.

And then it dawned on me. While my physical strength is down, it is merely a symptom of my underlying problem: emotional endurance. I am leading a completely solitary life. I have no friends, no family, no one (besides Leland, not to undermine his valuable position as roomate) to share my current state of life with. When the Peace Corps tells you to prepare to be lonely, they don't mean physically lonely; I clearly misunderstood. They mean emotionally. Having grown up in a very tight knit family, they were always there for me, and I rarely lacked a large amount of friends to pad my support system. But now I am here on my own, and on today of all days I am feeling it most. My eighth graders today did not understand what Thanksgiving was and had heard little of the holiday itself. But when I explained to them that during this large scale holiday families in America gather in a way similar (if not more so) to Christmas, they immediately understood that I "fika triste hoje" (that I am sad today) and why I did not have the strength and usual vivacity in class. It is the first time I have ever been separated from my family on this grand holiday. And while I have not cried yet (go me!) I know that emotionally, I am drained and this solitary life is starting to take its toll.

Leland and I are cooking two halves of a chicken today, as we cannot buy a whole chicken, let alone a whole turkey on this island. We have decided also to make mashed potatoes and, at my insistance, roast potates. Thanks to my mother, we have a plethura of gravy and we will make some sweet corn. And for dessert, choclate chip cookes (also, thank you mom) Small scale, but it is just the two of us Americans (besides some crazy old guy somewhere we keep hearing about) so there is no point to go crazy. My emotions I know will pick up, for there is nothing left to do but accept and move on. Which is what I am resigned to do and my will power will just have to overcome my current state of emotions or I will never survive. But I am determined to, so I take this as any other day and continue in the current life I have chosen.

Happy Thanksgiving to all, and know that you truely all have something to be thankful for, myself included (ok I ended cheesy I know sorry).

PS. it must be a sign, but the American guy just walked into the Youth Center where I am sitting writing this, and he really does look a little crazy, ha:)

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Another week going by. They are progressing more and more rapidly all the time. I am now in my 7th week of teaching, I have been doing it for almost 2 months! My goodness. Well there is nothing too much to report, only that our AIDS race is progressing quite well and Leland and I were both surprised at how quickly and adeptly the leaders of the Youth Center and local government got behind us. Which is excellent that they have sort of taken this thing and run with it (ha no pun intended). In our training, it was encouraged that we include various Community Content Based Instruction (or CCBI) in our lessons. This means that while teaching grammar, include something that would benefit the children's minds of maintaining a healthy and organized society. AIDS, for example, is a CCBI topic. This week, however, I have devoted to keeping the school clean. One of Helena's 11th grade classes is very concerned with the trash dumping at our school. It is true. We have a cantina at the school, a type of cafeteria where the children can go in between classes and get a little snack. The children are only class half a day, so there is no formal cafeteria like many American schools. 7th, 8th, and 9th grade go to school from 7:30am to 12:30 pm, while the older three grades are there from 2pm-7pm. This is done because there is not enough space in the school to teach all the children at once.

Anyway, about the trash. This week, my 8th grade students are making posters in English about cleaning up our school. They LOVE to draw and do artistic things, so this seemed like a good idea. They put so much care and effort into it, it's unbelievable. I will post the posters in the window when they are done, and hopefully take a picture so you all can see my little darlings and their artistic talents :) Next week I will focus on AIDS as it is leading up to December 1st, World AIDS day.

Speaking of drawing, I have enrolled myself into an art class that is offered here at the Youth Center. I have never taken an art class by choice in my entire life. And to take one that is not taught in my native language proved to a bit of a challenge during the first class last night. But it gives me something to do in the evenings, and to express my creative side, however small it may be, is something I feel I could enjoy. Plus it gives me a chance to completely immerse myself in the language and I am forced to understand. Although next time, I will bring a dictionary with me. So that's all for now, not that interesting. Sorry. Hope to have some crazy story next time, but for now it's just me and a simple life :)

Thursday, November 16, 2006

I know it has been a little while. The truth is, I haven't felt that I have had much to write about. My life here has become exactly that: a life. Anything I do here doesn't seem out of the ordinary because to me, it no longer is. Everyday has become a routine and it seems I have adapted fully to this way of life. My mentality has accepted that this is my life, this is the way it is and so I have stop questioning what happens to me on a daily basis. To me, it is just another day. Adaptation is such a wonderous thing really.

Last week I gave my students their first test. And their abilitites to adapt to the art of cheating astound me. They spend so much time and effort cheating that it is a wonder they don't use these creative skills to study. This is usually a comment that many a teacher makes, but it's true! I was never a serious cheater in all my years of school, and the lengths that these children will go to is amazing. They sit in desks of two, so it is very easy to copy off your neighbor. So I thought I would be tricky and make up two different tests. In essence two different tests for each table. And when they received the test back with some answers marked wrong because they were the answers of their neighbors questions, they still didn't understand why I had marked them wrong even though they had written the exact same thing as their neighbor. It's funny. But I have found that sometimes the common sense is just plain lacking.

So my weeks are pretty regular now. I go to the market on Monday mornings usually after my first class, so around 8:30. It's the best time to go as the vegetables are often fresher and they have more of a selection. I usually buy from one woman named Luz. There are about 6 or 7 vendors in the little marketplace but she usually has the most selection and fresher looking veggies. You can get pretty much everything here. I usually buy carrots and cucumbers because they make a wonderful snack especially now that I have been given the gift of ranch dressing (thank you Melanie, and mom of course). But you can get squash, zucchini, eggplant, potatoes, just about everything. I usually don't buy those veggies unless I know we will cook with them in the next couple of days. Things tend to spoil quickly. We always have onions, garlic, and green peppers in the house; Leland is a big fan of all and they cook well in things like BBQ sauce (yes we make our own because you can't buy it) and spaggetti sauce. We buy fruit very rarely because it's so expensive. It costs about $5 a kilo, which turns out to be like 2 or 3 oranges. That might not seem like a lot to you, but that same amount of money can also buy me a kilo of carrots, half a kilo of onions and garlic, and six eggs. Soooo, needless to say, fruit is something of a luxury. Going back to the BBQ sauce, we usually make a big batch of it and then use it for making a large batch of shredded BBQ chicken. This goes great on sandwiches, or in a quesadilla. I make tortillas about once a week. It takes about a half hour and they are so good and last about a week or so. Cheese is something that is readily available here, we even have parmesan! It is expensive, so we only buy it occassionally. There is a lot of pasta as Italians are a plenty here as well. For dessert I have perfected the art of making fudge, although the last batch I made for some reason will not freeze, so we have taken to just scooping it out and eating it like ice cream :)

Last night Leland and I made pizza and invited Helena and Tony over along with their two kids. The pizza came out quite nicely, considering Leland had to hand make the dough and I the sauce. But with the BBQ chicken on top, it was delicious :) So food is no trouble here. And we have become creative in the ways that we buy and cook food. We have tried to stop keeping left overs here, as nothing has any kind of preservative in it and things tend to go bad quickly, even if they are put in the fridge. We hand make a lot of stuff that can last such as tortillas, bread, fudge, BBQ chicken as this makes our lives a little easier since it is so much effort to prepare a meal. Also we have hired an empregada or a maid. The Peace Corps allowance allows for this and I figure that cleaning has not always been a favorite of mine to do, and the money PC gives me isn't really mine to begin with, so I might as well give it to a woman who can do the job better and needs the money more than I do. But the way, she will also be doing our laundry. Nice. Now that we don't have a machine in this apartment, we would have had to hand wash it. No thanks. Anyway, this blog dragged on longer than I thought, I am sorry if you were bored about all that food stuff. But things are going well, we are just waiting for the carpenter to finish our furniature (there is no local Ikea of course) and things will be just lovely! Hope you are all well.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

It happens to every Peace Corps volunteer some time in their service. They consider leaving. I in NO WAY plan to leave here. But these types of thoughts have been circulating in my mind. When I signed up for this, not one single person actually believed me. No one thought I could do it. Not one. I have a tendency to quit things and so I can understand where my family's doubts lay. Also, as my nickname has long been "princess" and I often live up to the word, I could see how my friends didn't believe me. But I have no plans on leaving, I could never do that to my students. Plus proving everyone I know wrong has a sort of bittersweet satisfaction to it. But that's not to say that thoughts of leaving haven't crossed my mind in the past three days.

Our group of 33 has now lost 2 and I can see why they say that Cape Verde has the highest Early Termination rate in all of West Africa. What this means is that more people choose to quit the Peace Corps early in this country than all of the PC countries in West Africa, including Senegal, Mauritania, and other countries that I could see being slightly harder than this one. But it's not just about being hard. The first person to ET (early terminate) from our group didn't leave because it was hard. He left because he didn't feel that this was the appropriate place for him. The work he was doing was something he could be doing anywhere. He was working with youth, something that this place does need but in his eyes, it was something that wasn't extraordinarily necessary. What I am trying to say, is that for him, maybe it was because this place is normally very easy to live in that he felt he was not needed. His efforts could be spent in a similar situation in the United States, where working with troubled youth is also a much-needed effort. As a teacher, my duties are fairly clear. For me, however, my thoughts have drifted from my work.

Leland and I moved into our new apartment on Monday. And we have not showered since. To be sure, an apartment with four walls and a ceiling is far better than the mud-style hut I envisioned myself living in when I signed up for this gig. But I have learned in the past three days that my new motto is "patience is an incredible virtue." Our bathroom was completely empty. It didn't even have tiling. No shower, toilet or anything. I wish I had taken a picture. Our kitchen was not usable either, as the guy had not finished painting any of the house, including the kitchen and both our bedrooms. So Monday evening we went out to dinner, and I accidentally left my ATM card in the machine. Lovely. The first night we spent in our new apartment was hot, sticky, and full of mosquitoes. Also, the lovely dog chorus that lives just outside our window loves to put on concerts in the middle of the night. Did I mention we have a cockroach problem? Yesterday and Monday were spent purchasing items for our house. Things we haven't yet needed like pots, pans, plates, fans, etc. All while both of us have full time jobs. What bothers us most is that this isn't something we should have had to worry about at this point in our service. The Peace Corps should have secured us a permanent house before we got here, so we could have spent our initial week when I didn't have school doing all of the household errands. As it is, Leland and I have wasted two and a half hours today just trying to get a phone number in our house. We now have it, but we are waiting for the guy to come hook it up. It's a good thing the hook up guys is one of Leland's students. The phone line is all the more important now because my cell phone ran out of batteries yesterday, switched itself off, and has now refused to turn back on. So, we have no contact to outside world (minus of course the internet which I love to spend my time on, lucky me I know).

Our frustration reached its peak yesterday evening when the bathroom still hadn't been complete and we still couldn't cook. In the past three days, I have probably cried more than I have slept. Luckily they have finished the bathroom today and we can finally shower and pee. Things are beginning to look up again I guess. We just need to buy some bug spray and we'll be set. More or less. So we continue the struggle, the past few days have been the hardest. But things can only go up from here, right?

Monday, November 06, 2006

Well, I am officially exhausted. Completely. I might have dozed off waiting for this web page to load. And I am sure that I have one eye open and one eye closed :) Of course I can't confirm that because I no longer have a mirror. Today was our moving day. Again. But we have finally moved (mostly just our stuff) into our new apartment. Along with about 6-7 workers. My favorite is the guy painting my bedroom walls as we speak. Or the two guys tiling the bathroom (that does not yet have a shower), one with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. Yes, the place is incomplete and all of my belongings are sitting on my bed so the man can finish painting the walls and then sweep out my room. We can't set up the fridge or stove because he's just paiting the kitchen as well, so we find ourselves scrounging for cheap retaurant food. Did I mention I can't wait to wake up high tomorrow from the paint fumes? So, yes I have rambled on a little bit about how my life is a little difficult at the moment, and when put in perspective, it's really not all that bad. But this moving business probably could not have come at a WORSE TIME! My classes are ok, and this week is a little easier for me because it's testing time. So I don't really have to lesson plan, just make up review excercises for them to practice. Then grade the tests and go over them in class. So as far as school goes, it's not so bad. But planning this race thing and all that is stressful. We only have 3 more weeks to get everything planned out and ready. And why does that feel like such a short amount of time?

On a sidebar, I kicked two students out of my class today for the first time (not counting the time I dragged that other girl out of class. I didn't really kick her out so much as take her myself). They were both boys in my eight grade class, one 16 and the other 17 (do you remember how old you were in eighth grade? I'm pretty sure it wasn't 17...yeah). The 17 year old causes problems a lot, so today he created a ruckus with the boy he was sitting with. He was messing with the girl who sits in front of them. She stood up in the middle of me talking to class (I would have loved to see the astonished expression on my face) and came to the front of the class and in front of everyone told me quite loudly what the boys were doing. Well I had had just about enough of those boys anyway. So I walked down the aisle and in plain English simply said "Get Out." I hope I didn't look as nervous as I felt about it. Marco (the 17 year old) argued for a few seconds but when I turned my back to walk back to the front he and the other boy grabbed their things and walked out. The class then proceeded to applaude. Apperently I should have done this weeks ago. From what the other teachers told me afterwords, they will probably behave a little better in class now. Until the fear wears off of course and they go back to being obnoxious. So that was my fun story of the day.

In the more creative side of things, I have decided to make curtains for our house. We have curtain bars, but I don't actually think you can buy curtains. So I will make some. Wish me luck, this will be a first time thing for me. But how hard can they be? I'm excited about decorating my apartment. I love decorating. And I can start planting my little herb garden!! Yay. So tired and exhausted but happy and now in a permanent, smelly but painted, shower-less apartment. It's so very Peace Corps.

Friday, November 03, 2006

So the week has been mainly continuous, although it looks to be a busy weekend again for us as we will be moving....AGAIN. But this time it is to a permanent apartment, finally, which is nice, because I think we will feel at home finally. This will really be my home for the next two years or so. It has been 4 months almost to the date that I have seen my family, and that is about the longest I've ever gone not seeing them. So it's making me a little sad, but on the upside, things are finally starting to move along as far as our lives go.

World AIDS day is December 1st, and as we are in Africa, it is only appropriate to do a rather large event. There are several things that are done with the people of each of our islands: poetry contests, playwriting contests, races, etc. Well, we here on Boa Vista are doing a 5k race. Leland suggested that a 5k race would be a good thing to get the community involved, and it seemed perfect to do it on World AIDS day. So we have become co-chairs, so to speak. The community seems to be very in to it. I was surprised acutally, at the respose we got. Leland's counterpart at the Youth Center was very excited and has promised to put the weight of the Youth Center behind it. With the help of the PE teacher at my highschool, hopefully my students will be just as enthused. It is designed to be a race for all ages, as we will have booths and tables set up with information about AIDS. It will be our first large scale community project and Leland and I are pretty excited about. Hopefully things will continue to progess as they have been. After all, we have less than a month to prepare. So that is all for now, if you have suggestions or helpful input, we are always glad to hear it. I will let you all know how everything is progressing. Or if I'm pulling my hair out with frustration by December 1st.

On another note, I give my first test to my classes mext week. It's kind of like midterms for them right now. I'm a little nervous about it, I think I will be too easy. But what can you do? There are like 20 more tests to come, right?