School, Monkeys, Titanic, and Jesus

August 2, 2008 11:30 am

I saw my project today. I am becoming much more optimistic. They changed my school from the orphanage school that Kate will work at to an international school closer to the city center. I will be teaching in their secondary school and at this school all instruction is in English. I think it is one of their nicest schools here, but they still need teachers badly. I am much happier with this than teaching 2-12 year olds who don't speak ANY english. This could be much more successful. I also hope to help build the community school that they are constructing and to generally work in orphanages in my spare time. They are going to try to arrange for me to get some Swahili instruction. If I like this placement maybe I will stay on longer and forgo my hole-toilet. But for me to stay I must not spend much money and I must feel useful. That is most important.

As far a my health goes, I feel pretty good. I am concerned that the Malarone makes me feel tired, but it might just be jet lag. If I am still for too long I start to feel tired - kind of like I had a long night of drinking, hangover tired.

I have had to give up on the vegetarianism while I am here. It is just too difficult when others are cooking for you. Our host family has also announced that their goal is to make us fat.

When I came home today a woman carrying water on her head escorted by 2 burros walked by on my street. Yesterday, I saw some guys in the back of a lumber truck with a baboon. There are not many baboons in the city though and this makes me sad.

Our host father is quite well-versed in politics and has degrees from Ottawa and Cambridge. He is teaching me about African politics by way of me asking him hundreds of questions per dinner session.

People are very excited about Obama here and in Kenya. If anyone has access, I would greatly appreciate a ton of Obama schwag...and some Kraft mac and cheese. These people want to know about a typical Texas diet and they do not have any McDonald's here so I thought I would make do with mac and cheese.

We have an avacado tree in our yard, a bible on the front room table, several pictures of Jesus, 4 calendars, and a poster of 2 kittens that says "Becoming number one is easier than remaining number one." Oh yeah, and two framed posters of the movie Titanic. There is also a stuffed bear on display that is still in the bag to protect it from dust.

If you don't have anything to do today I would like to highly recommend looking up the English dubbed Argentinian soap opera Lalola. I can't believe that I had to go to Africa to get good South American soaps, but there you go. They only get a few from South Africa...most seem to be from Peru and Argentina. I can't imagine why. But I have to say, the dubbing is hilarious.