Bunnies

Our rabbits had babies. About ten to be exact, and in order to prevent ten turning into 40 my host mother has been telling my brothers "You need to sell those bunnies. What do we need bunnies for? We don't eat them; they don't give us milk or eggs. Send them away! Sell them at the bazar!"

"What?! Do the bunnies bother you? What did the bunnies ever do to you?"

So we still have ten baby bunnies.

A good spin on the outhouse trips

It is the 11th of May! We have been official volunteers for exactly 18 months now and as I sit here thinking about how quickly time has gone by, I start to wonder what will I miss about being here? For a long time, I thought something that I would not miss at all would be the whole outhouse experience, but I’ve started to notice little things that go with the outhouse trips for which I might start to feel a bit of nostalgia.

Observing moon cycles, for example. In America, I might notice sometimes that it’s a full moon, or when the moon looks really red because of all the pollution in the sky, I might think “that’s pretty.” But now I am almost obsessively observant. A full moon means I don’t really need the flashlight, while a new moon means I try not to have to go out there after 9pm. It’s pretty and functional.

Barnyard animals get in the way, making you think more than usual. It’s annoying, but kind of fun when you have to get through a maze of cows, broken tractors and barking dogs to get to the toilet. I don’t know, maybe it’s weird but I get a kick out of it when it happens.

You find out the weather in the morning. In America, I would leave the house sometimes not at all dressed for the cold or hot it actually was outside. But when you have to go outside first thing in the morning, you get a pretty good idea what you are in for that day.

… Ok, so there’s not that much that I will actually miss about the outhouse, but there is a little.

How to keep control of your class

Draw a line in chalk down the center of the table and tell the little boys, "DO NOT cross the line".



It was working until I took out the camera.

Seminar

My site mate and I had a seminar this week called "Using Multi-Media in the English classroom." It was mostly on how to use PowerPoint, songs and video plus how to do Google searches... We weren't expecting that many people, but 29 English teachers from the region came. I was going to put some pictures on here, but it turns out that somehow everything I have has a major virus on it and I can't open any of the folders on my camera's card... Sorry. Just know that it was really successful and that the general public (or just the English teachers) is demanding another one.

Updates

About a month ago, I cut and pasted all my old postings to see what I’ve written and I realized that I have some things I should update; this post is to tie up all those loose ends.

The entire 6th form really approves of my new hair color.

The cat got dirty the very next day. He is still disgusting, maybe even more so than before I tried to banya him. He probably went out and found mud to roll in just to teach me a lesson.

Even though it’s gross, I’m still eating stuff with a sauce made of mayonnaise and Tabasco sauce.

Our combined club is going really well. We have about three superstars who show up all the time and a few others who occasionally drop in. We are currently watching Gilmore Girls and talking about parent/children relationships while also looking at what some American lives are like. Our “resource center” is currently a collection of English books prominently displayed on a bookshelf in the town library. However, I found out last week that the librarians won’t let them check out the books, so I told them to tell me what they wanted to take and then to sneak them out… I think it’s more a problem of them not having the books catalogued or anything because they aren’t sure how to categorize them. We’ll work on that.

Once I get into my posts from the beginning of my service, I see titles with a lot of capital letters and exclamation points. “Site Announcement!”, “Site Visit!”, “INTERNET!”, “New Address!” I feel like somebody needs to sit that girl down and tell her to cool it.

Ok, I know I haven’t done this in a long time, but I’m asking PLEASE send me gossip magazines. I’ve got a lot of Time coming at me, but one of my students told me the other day she’s tired of reading about Barack Obama. It isn’t that she doesn’t like him, but she really wants to read more about… Brad Pitt, Britney Spears, etc… See? It isn’t even entirely for me; I give them to my school when I’m finished reading.