Teaching, Watermelon, and Ramadan

Howdy! I'm in Ouaga for the weekend as a new batch of volunteers are sworn-in. My two closest neighbors (one 40km away and the other 55km) are being replaced by people in the new crew, so it's a change of the guards for me and quite exciting.

I've gotten some requests regarding what my typical day is here and now that I have a job, it's a little more interesting than "I sit on my ass all day" (which wasn't exactly the truth, but also not really all that far from it either). So I'll try to give you a good feel for my life here.

For starters, I sleep outside every night (except when it rains) because it's too hot to sleep indoors. I have a cot and a mosquito net that make for quite a comfy night with a great view of the amazing stars. I sleep in the courtyard that I share with a family. I wake up about 5:45am everyday (though recently I've been getting woken up by the family cooking for the 4am pre-fasting meal; it's Ramadan, ya know). I get up and put my bed back in the house and take a "bucket bath" or just wash my face, depending on my scuzz-factor. Then I make breakfast, which is usually oatmeal or cereal (I use powdered milk for my cereal, so the milk is warm which is really hard to get used to). Then I brush my teeth by the street and put on my teaching clothes.

I usually have class at 7am. I'm teaching two classes of math and one physical science class. Each class has between 50 and 80 kids, so I actually have pretty small classes compared with some of my friends. The school's less than a 5 minute walk from my house, but I usually bike anyway (I have Mr. Tranmer to thank for that habit). I have 2-4 hours of teaching a day and usually all in the morning. My classrooms have desks that fit 2-3 (and sometimes 4) kids and I have a big chalkboard at the front. I find myself fiddling with my chalk while talking exactly how my old beloved government/Model UN teacher did, which amuses me.

The rest of my day is filled with lesson planning, reading, chatting with friends and colleagues, making lunch (usually a PB sandwich), and doing logic problems (thanks mom and dad!). I do all my dishes for the day sometime before dinner Ag Effort-tub-style. I make dinner on my gas stove between 4 and 5, so that I can be done eating and take a bucket bath before sundown (remember I don't have electricity and my shower area gets taken over by roaches at night). Nowadays, at sundown, my family ends their daily fasting and we completely pig out on watermelon. After that, I either sit and chat and listen to the radio or go to the video club to watch a movie or soccer game. (Last week I saw a rediculously cool Thai action film that seriously rivaled, if not surpassed, Battle Royale!) Lately, I've been buying fried sweet potatoes for my movie snack. Then I go to bed between 8 and 10:30pm.

This week, my big fun project was creating a periodic table for my physical science class (yep, I'm still as nerdy and anal as ever). The French one I had was not very readable and some of the weights were wrong and it would be entirely too much to ask to actually have one in their book. Did you know that elements' names can change from language to language? And also that the French use commas as decimal points and periods to mark thousands (where we use commas)? So that's why my kids can't really use the nice, pretty English table available to me.

Yep, that about does it for me. Tonight there's a costume party as an early Halloween treat, so I've got to find a costume ASAP. I loves me a good Halloween party.