So this has been a interesting week in training. We got to cook in groups this week which was a lot of fun and a great change in the diet because everything the Burkinabé cook is similar. Meaning that they cook some form of starch (rice, couscous, or pasta) and either tomato or peanut sauce with oil. They don't really believe in variety here.
Becky made banana bread that didn't quite get cooked all the way but was delicious anyway. We had planned to make a double batch of bread but there was time so we made a type of banana syrup that was pretty amazing. We used it to fill the crepes that we made. We had a salad, that was pretty good, from spinach, tomatoes, onions, and a dressing of honey, oil, garlic, and vinegar. We also made mashed potatoes with garlic and onions which were amazing. Then Becky and I cooked mashed potatoes and grilled cheese for our host family. They were pretty excited by that. I thought that it tasted pretty good as well.
Model school has been going OK.. For me, I am amazed by some of the things that these kids are able to do. One girl had opened 19 new documents during class and somehow did not crash the computer or get the exercise correct. She also hadn't erased any of her mistakes. Trying to get them understand that it is possible to fix a mistake without restarting from the beginning or try new things by themselves is very difficult. Becky changed from 6th grade algebra to geometry. The kids know how to draw a square and a rectangle, but anything with angles other than 90 degrees they just don't understand. One day a kid made fun of Becky on her pronunciation of a word, so she named that kid mon amis and every time that she asked a question mon amis was the one who had to answer. The class thought that it was hilarious and laughed at him every time Becky called him mon amis. Next week shouldn't be to bad for Becky, she is doing a review then giving a test for the class. I am going to get to teach about the Internet for a couple of days then am going to spend the last day going over how to play solitaire and freecell. That is going to be NO fun :)
Last weekend and this weekend we have had to ride out to village for our classes on Saturday, which isn't bad in and of itself, but why wait till the last two weeks of stage to do it. We are tired and even less motivated than usual on Saturdays. I would understand if we had done it at the beginning of stage when things were completely new, but now the only difference that I between village and city was the availability of distractions. There aren't any in village. That and the trainers forget that we need more than one water filter for 32 of us.
The Peace Corps giving me a bike probably wasn't the best idea on their part. I like to go fast and bikes aren't really made to carry a guy as big as me. Thus far I have bent one rim so badly that it could be fixed and have another rim that now needs to be replaced. It is also not the best for my health. On the way back from village I took a tumble after hitting a bump a little too fast. I had to ask Becky to patch me up after washing the most of the dirt off. I'm fine just a little road rash. Becky isn't really good for her bike either. She has gone through two sets of pedals and one kickstand. Plus she's had a couple of flats.
We got to go to the tailor this week too. That was kinda fun. Becky is getting a dress and two skirts made. I am getting a shirt and a mini boubou made for swearing in. My shirt and Becky's dress are from the same material. One of Becky's skirts and my mini boubou are going to be of the same material. Aren't we cute. The tailor is charging us about 13,000 cfa, which is about $30. Yeah the tailor is ripping us off a little but can't complain to much since she is making a dress from the Victoria's Secret catalog. :)
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Monday, August 10, 2009
Not so long awaited..... :P
Hi everyone! Sorry that we were not able to post a blog last week. The cyber cafe that we usually us was closed all week due to someone having a baby. Don't worry though, we posted the blog that we wrote for last week anyway :)
Its official, we only have two more weeks left of training! I have am starting to tell everyone how many days we have left every morning. This may sound silly but I have every intention of being extremely lazy that first week at site. I'm even thinking about sleeping in until 7 a.m. Holy cow! Yep we have sad sad little lives here. We wake up at 5 a.m. and are watching the clock by 7 so that we can go to bed by 8 p.m. I know my Mom is laughing her butt of reading this especially since I always made fun of her for falling asleep while she was watching T.V.
Model school is more than half way over. I can honestly say that for me, model school has really made my French progress a lot. I now reprimand children for not following directions or tease them when they do not listen to the question that I ask and give me these horrible replies. I am even starting to not follow word for word what is in the book. Sure there are times when the kids just look at me like I'm an idiot when I'm talking, but I figure I'm doing darn good for only having started to learn the language 8 weeks ago :) Tim is a goof. He hates lesson planning so he rarely does it at all. More often than not, he is asking me what he should teach the students to do that day while we are eating breakfast. I'm glad he is so laid back. If I did something like that...oh I can't even imagine it. I love have plans and orderly schedules. Yes I admit I am extremely anal, maybe even slightly OCD :)
Other important or interesting things that are going on over here: Wednesday all of the secondary education volunteers biked out to Bogoya Z. The 7k ride was amazing. I will admit I was getting slightly irritated with our group of riders. Ok story time: So there are 16 SE volunteers and we had to ride out to the GEE village training site. We broke up into four groups. Each of the groups had people in them that had been to village before and said they knew the way there. Well that wasn't quite the case for my group. So the person who had been to village and was leading the group couldn't remember where the road was that lead out of our village to get to Bogoya. So our group leader spent approximately 20 minutes looking for the road that they were sure they would eventually find. Meanwhile I am starting to get a little testy because we are going to be late, and I detest being late to anything. Well as luck would have it, she did eventually find the road that lead to Bogoya. We arrived about 15 minutes late. I love the look Tim gave me when we finally got to the village. It definitely implied pleased don't kill anyone and HI. The day didn't get a lot better after that either. It was so hot that day and there was only one 5 gallon bucket water filter for over 45 people. So that may not seem like a big deal to you right now, but I can explain. The filters are somewhat slow especially if it is not a new filter. After the water is finally through the filter, you must at bleach and then wait an addition 15 minutes before drinking. Yeah not the wisest thing to only have one filter, especially when the filter wasn't working well at all and caused us not to have water for a couple of hours until an LCF went back to ECLA and got another water filter. All Tim and I are going to say about this is TIA (This Is Africa).
Oh some other interesting news to tell you all about; we did our committee voting this past Wednesday too. So there are several groups/committees that you can be voted onto here in the PC BF. Tim volunteered to be on the IT group and I was voted in as the SE representative for VAC. This means that we both go to Ouaga once every three months for a quarterly meeting. We are both pretty excited about being on each committee. The IT committee is working on expanding sharepoint so that it can be accessed from any computer in BF. VAC is more or less the student council of PC BF.
Its official, we only have two more weeks left of training! I have am starting to tell everyone how many days we have left every morning. This may sound silly but I have every intention of being extremely lazy that first week at site. I'm even thinking about sleeping in until 7 a.m. Holy cow! Yep we have sad sad little lives here. We wake up at 5 a.m. and are watching the clock by 7 so that we can go to bed by 8 p.m. I know my Mom is laughing her butt of reading this especially since I always made fun of her for falling asleep while she was watching T.V.
Model school is more than half way over. I can honestly say that for me, model school has really made my French progress a lot. I now reprimand children for not following directions or tease them when they do not listen to the question that I ask and give me these horrible replies. I am even starting to not follow word for word what is in the book. Sure there are times when the kids just look at me like I'm an idiot when I'm talking, but I figure I'm doing darn good for only having started to learn the language 8 weeks ago :) Tim is a goof. He hates lesson planning so he rarely does it at all. More often than not, he is asking me what he should teach the students to do that day while we are eating breakfast. I'm glad he is so laid back. If I did something like that...oh I can't even imagine it. I love have plans and orderly schedules. Yes I admit I am extremely anal, maybe even slightly OCD :)
Other important or interesting things that are going on over here: Wednesday all of the secondary education volunteers biked out to Bogoya Z. The 7k ride was amazing. I will admit I was getting slightly irritated with our group of riders. Ok story time: So there are 16 SE volunteers and we had to ride out to the GEE village training site. We broke up into four groups. Each of the groups had people in them that had been to village before and said they knew the way there. Well that wasn't quite the case for my group. So the person who had been to village and was leading the group couldn't remember where the road was that lead out of our village to get to Bogoya. So our group leader spent approximately 20 minutes looking for the road that they were sure they would eventually find. Meanwhile I am starting to get a little testy because we are going to be late, and I detest being late to anything. Well as luck would have it, she did eventually find the road that lead to Bogoya. We arrived about 15 minutes late. I love the look Tim gave me when we finally got to the village. It definitely implied pleased don't kill anyone and HI. The day didn't get a lot better after that either. It was so hot that day and there was only one 5 gallon bucket water filter for over 45 people. So that may not seem like a big deal to you right now, but I can explain. The filters are somewhat slow especially if it is not a new filter. After the water is finally through the filter, you must at bleach and then wait an addition 15 minutes before drinking. Yeah not the wisest thing to only have one filter, especially when the filter wasn't working well at all and caused us not to have water for a couple of hours until an LCF went back to ECLA and got another water filter. All Tim and I are going to say about this is TIA (This Is Africa).
Oh some other interesting news to tell you all about; we did our committee voting this past Wednesday too. So there are several groups/committees that you can be voted onto here in the PC BF. Tim volunteered to be on the IT group and I was voted in as the SE representative for VAC. This means that we both go to Ouaga once every three months for a quarterly meeting. We are both pretty excited about being on each committee. The IT committee is working on expanding sharepoint so that it can be accessed from any computer in BF. VAC is more or less the student council of PC BF.
Long Awaited......
We are starting our second week of model school now and Becky is starting to be a hard ass during her classes. She has kicked out 2 kids from her class and yelled at a couple of others. I on the other hand am the nice teacher and have not had to kick out anyone. The LCFs say that Becky's assertiveness is good though for when we get to site. They really like that she doesn't take any flak from the students. On the other hand the PCVF say that she needs to mock the students when they don't listen and thus issue stupid responses to questions. My kids just don't even try to answer the questions cause they have never used a computer. But they know that they can download music and they are excited by that idea.
Today I brought material for my outfit for the swearing in ceremony in a couple of weeks. I think that I am going to have a bubu made. A bubu is a shirt that comes about to thigh length then has matching pants. Becky found material that she really likes but we couldn't get it today because we didn't have enough cash on us. It is a deep red with gold peacocks. My pagne is gold with black designs all over it.
We're pretty pumped that we haven't killed each other and that we are a still happily married most of the time. When Becky is sick at night I am giving her the wash bucket and tell her not to wake me up . Now that I'm on amoxicillin Becky tells me to stay away from her and we are both happy.
Today I brought material for my outfit for the swearing in ceremony in a couple of weeks. I think that I am going to have a bubu made. A bubu is a shirt that comes about to thigh length then has matching pants. Becky found material that she really likes but we couldn't get it today because we didn't have enough cash on us. It is a deep red with gold peacocks. My pagne is gold with black designs all over it.
We're pretty pumped that we haven't killed each other and that we are a still happily married most of the time. When Becky is sick at night I am giving her the wash bucket and tell her not to wake me up . Now that I'm on amoxicillin Becky tells me to stay away from her and we are both happy.
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