Wednesday, March 16, 2011

I'm on a high right now

Hello!  So I have been super busy and having too much fun, which has taken away from my ability to keep everyone back home informed on what is going on with me.  I promise once I get to site and have more free time I will write better blogs.  Pictures are being uploaded to facebook as I type and fingers crossed no power goes off because I am trying to upload all 125 at once...

So things are becoming routine here in uganda so I am finding it difficult to write something that may be of interest to everyone.  Today is our last day of school based training and things got progressively better week by week.  My ugandan mentor teacher was really supportive near the end and is confident in my ability to be a successful teacher which makes me a little less worried.  A fun review I did with my students was chalkboard competitions (which I stole from jacque thanks girl!!)  I was really impressed with the amount of information they retained and my mentor loved it and is now giong to copy.  That is great because the students loved the game.  The other thing I also did that they loved was this week I let them write questions on scraps of paper about me, america, or whatever and answered them the last 10-15 minutes of class.  My favorites were in no particular order...

Do you know Lord Vuldermort
Do you know justin bieber, a young artist
Are you a virgin
Do they allow coupling (bfs and gfs) in schools in america
The president of america is my uncle
Can you explain why americans are white
can you teach me how to kiss
DO you like hannah montana
will you take me to america
i love you madam what is your number can i call you
can you sing and will you give us a sample (I did not comply with this request)

So yeah there were a few innappropriate ones but I also got a lot of positive feedback from the students and they really are sad to see us go this week.  Yesterday when I was done teaching I went to watch a soccer game where my school unfortunately was beat in kitende.  It was really fun to watch them have a good time and support their classmates and I got to talk for a few hours with my mentor teacher and another business teacher at the school who are amazing at what they do and extremely friendly.

Then I went to a club last night with 3 of my brothers (Derrick, Eddie and Mark) and my 3 sisters (Angela, Eddie and Slyvia)  I have such a good time hanging out with them, and they are all really good dancers of course.  People in uganda got rhythm haha.  The music/dj in this small kajjansi club was far better then any club ive been to in the US (this is subjective to my music interest) and i kept up with them pretty well.  I kind of get the best of both worlds because I have these siblings that are my age, and I have the little kids in the house as well.  My maama is also the sweetest ever, all the trainees that visit my house heart her!  She let us use the kitchen to bake brownies and banana bread for the teachers at the school to say thank you and we gave a whole pan to my family and they were quite impressed.  (See pictures on fb for how this baking looked)  So far they have taught me how to make chapati, potatoes and rolex.  How to light a charcoal stove and slowly i am learning how to wash my clothes (I am so bad at it... seriuosly i miss machines my clothes just get wet not clean haha)

So that is all I have for now... pictures have 8 more minutes it says so its looking good guys!  Miss everyone!!!  I'll be in Lira all next week so I will probably post again when I get back to Lweza!!!

But Aber (Goodnight)

Nikki

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Thieving Monkeys!

Ibuto wunu aber (That is goodmorning everyone in Lango).  I had a little bit of time in between lessons today to go to the internet cafe (That is right next to my school!) so I am going to write another disorganized blog of random thoughts... haha

I am at Kajjanse secondary school, it is about a 15 minute walk from my homestay.  I am teaching chemistry and biology classes for 3 weeks to get some practice.  Learning Lango is interesting.... We have only been studying for 2 weeks and after 2 more weeks we go to something called language immersion.  Basically we go to the north and are forced to give up english, supervised though of course.  We are in class on weekdays when we arent at the the school from 8am-5pm.  But that 5pm doesn't always apply because we are in Uganda!  What I mean by that is... things start late and run over here on a regular basis.  I would actually be amazed if a non peace corps "event" started and ended within the scheduled time frame.

There is a lot I could say about this country but since I only have a little time I just want to talk about the HIV/AIDS crisis here.  Yesterday we went to TASO, which is an amazing HIV/AIDS outreach program.  They do everything from supplying ARVs to positive people and helping support their children, to traveling out to schools for free to spread awareness to youth here.  We got to listen to a testament of one of the HIV positive volunteers.   It was incredibly moving as you can imagine... but what I want to point out is that he didn't cry.  He fought SO HARD to hold back his tears.  In this culture people don't cry, it makes them uncomfortable and we all had to hold back as well because they wouldn't understand why we would be crying. It was the most moving experience I have had here so far.  The man was part of a drama group, who use song and dance to convey their messages.  I took a video of their opening performance that hopefully I will get to post up at some point.

Other then that... I am running out of internet time... I have more pictures of cute ugandan children then I can count.  We went to a zoo in Entebbe, which guess what, is just like a zoo in america except for the poor excuses for fences haha (seriously i thought an ostrich was going to run out and peck us all to death)  Lastly monkeys are like squirells here.  They roam free.  One jumped up and scared my friend leah half to death because it smelled our chocolate and then it called it's buddies over and they broke into a car (idiots left their windows open) and took all their food and belongings out.  If I get jacked by a monkey here i'm coming home lol.  I have pictures of this monkey fiasco so hopefully you get to see them soon!

Apwoyo Tutwal for reading and I know people want pictures so I will get them up as son as i can!