Reconnect

The school term in long gone. I feel like I haven't done any real work since Independence day (March 21) so it will be a bit of a shock when the next term starts partway through May. Two weeks of my vacation from school are occupied by Peace Corps mid-service training, otherwise known as Reconnect. Before that though a few of my friends here met up on the coast for some fun. We spent some time on the beach but the water is extraordinarily cold so the best time was spent at the dunes sand boarding. Imagine flying down a big pile of sand head first on a small, thin piece of waxed up particle board at speeds exceeding 40 mph. I might have to go again. You do have to climb back up the dunes after every run, but it is well worth the effort. The only drawback was afterwards when I painfully realized how much sand I had in my eyes. I had to get help with my contacts because once I got the sand coated lens out of my eye I couldn't keep my eyes open long enough to put the contacts in their case. Goggles might have been helpful, but no matter what sand is going to find its way in.

 

Reconnect has been fine so far. We are staying at a pretty nice hotel/conference center outside of Windhoek on the side of a mountain (oversized hill for you Coloradoans, think Falls Creek type topography for you Oklahomans, and there aren't really any hills like this in Kansas, sorry). The area is very beautiful, lots of hills in the distance and there is a nice view of Windhoek at night. Other than the nice views there isn't much to do there though. Several people visited China town last week so I have now seen Syriana, Brokeback Mountain, and Munich and plan to watch several more movies next week. Tomorrow I'm hoping to go wandering through the surrounding hills, probably on the roads though because the tall grass looks like snake country. By the beginning of May I should be back to site and have plenty of time on the Internet but until then I probably won't touch a computer.

 

I did get a chance to buy a new book. Some of you have heard about Tsotsi, the movie out of South Africa that won the Oscar for best foreign film. Well, I haven't seen the movie yet but the book was very good. I only have two minutes left so I can't go into it, and a would rather not ruin the story before you have a chance to see the movie.

 

 

tortillas

My tortilla making ability just improved significantly. After
lamenting my lack of a rolling pin to flatten my tortillas I opened
the bottom cupboard and saw that I actually already had one. So this
time I got them really flat and they were oh so good. I could actually
roll it up like a taco instead of eating it flat with a fork like a
tostada. Now if I just had some refried beans.

(cue theme song)
Welcome to this edition of, "I'm Glad I Have, I Wish I Had" the game
show when PCVs honestly talk about things they miss from home without
just complaining about it.

Our first category is the kitchen:
I'm glad I have a stove and an oven and a refrigerator and a sink with
a working faucet and drain, I wish I had a microwave.
I'm glad I have pots and pans to cook with, I wish I had a dishwasher
to clean up afterwards.
I'm glad I have good cupboard space, I wish I had a couple drawers to
store utensils.

Next we move to the classroom:
I'm glad I have a chalkboard and an unlimited supply of colored chalk,
I wish I had a white board with markers or if I really wanted to
dream, I wish I had a laptop and a projector.
I'm glad I have a copy maching and a stapler, I wish I had a copy
machine that automatically collated and stapled.
I'm glad I have a classroom with chairs, desks and a door that locks.
I wish I had carpet to deaden the noise, a locking cupboard for
storage and enough desks and chairs for my biggest class to all have a
place to sit.

(cue theme song)
That's all the time we have for today, tune in next time for the next
edition of, "I'm Glad I Have, I Wish I Had."

In other news, I read in the newspaper that Brad Pitt and Angelina
Jolie are hiding ou somewhere along the Namibian coast for her to have
her baby. The Skeleton Coast is one of the most remote places on
Earth, guarded by desert and a treacherous coastline, making it a
perfect place to hid from the cameras.

IM

I am having a very surreal experience IMing with Brad, Melanie and Abby all at the same time. You might be able to catch me on AIM (broccoli43), the time difference is still an issue but I can getonline from time to time.

I don't know if it was negligence or sympathy, but I just found out on my own that Nickel Creek is playing in Colorado Springs and in Lawrence this week. I hope you all make it out to the concert in my memory and report back on the best concert of your life. The one I want to be at the Chris Thile solo show in NYC.

Bugs

Some things are avoidable, spiders and mosquitoes are not. My house
policy on spiders hasn't come back from the lawyers yet, but I have
already begun using the new legislation. All wall spiders must obtain
a permit and observe a few simple rules. A spider cannot be larger
than two inches across and must remain above 8 feet from the ground.
Also, no more than two spiders will be issued permits to stay in a
single room. Spiders found in violation of this policy will be evicted
immediately except for the enormous one that seems to be living
underneath my refrigerator. Mosquitoes are not allowed in my house
under any circumstances, I keep my windows closed and sleep under a
net not so much because I don't want to get bit, that happens enough
when I'm not at home, but I can't stand the sound of a mosquito
buzzing in my ear when I'm trying to work or especially when I want to
go to sleep. Last night for example I sustained approximately ten
bites on both ankles when I was in the library but I slept great once
I got home underneath my net.

New photos posted

Well, not exactly new photos. But at least old ones that are finally getting on the Internet.

This week ended up ok, nothing too exciting happened at school which is probably a good thing. I am still cleaning up my kitchen from my birthday cooking, my misguided present to myself was not doing the dishes after I cooked which is catching up with me now. Friday after school the teachers had a little party to welcome me and the other new teacher and say goodbye to a temporary teacher who is done at the end of the term. Yes a welcome party three months later, whatever. These three months I had been thinking that it is nice that the teachers at my school aren't alcoholics, but now I'm not so sure. There was everything from orange soda to brandy at the party and some of the teachers were pretty drunk pretty fast. I was exhausted at about 2pm on Friday so about 9 I snuck away from the party, which wasn't too hard considering the levels of sobriety and light. Before I left though I'm pretty sure I saw a teacher get dangerously close to breaking out into the Carlton. The thing I haven't figured out though is that he's probably never seen the fresh prince of bel air. Scary. Really though it was a decent party and I had a couple of interesting conversations before everyone had imbibed too much. Let me clarify, not everyone was drunk but there were enough that I didn't expect that were tipsy after one or two drinks that it made an impression on me. The other memorable happening at the party was the welcome speech in six languages, I have a picture of the six people giving the speech in English, Afrikaans, Otjiwambo, Damara/Nama, Setswana and Otjiherero. I missed 83% of the jokes in the speech.

This weekend I am finishing marking exams, playing soccer, reading The Lord of the Flies and The Pursuit of God, baking some chocolate, peanut butter, oatmeal cookies (my new favorite that I have yet to perfect), playing guitar and getting ready to be gone for a couple weeks. I'm done marking the grade 10 exam, about 20 kids made a D (50%) or better, but only 2 got below a 20% so I think it went ok. The grade 9 exam is taking longer to mark because there are 125 kids but I'm almost done with the first 2 pages out of 4. I won't bore you with the rest of the stats on the test, the real exams come at the end of next term and the end of the year. End of next term my classes will write the same test as five other schools in our regional cluster and the all important exam is at the end of the year. Hopefully they'll be ready, the average on this test was between an E and an F, I would like to see an average in the D range. I've got some work to do and so do the kids.

We had one soccer match this afternoon and won 1-0. Tomorrow morning we have an easy match but we need to score 4 goals and then we play the best team. If we win both then we win back the money I put up for our team to be able to play. If we can score 5 against the weaker team and draw with the better one then we can still win overall. Some things are different in Namibia than in America, thats a shocker right? I got new shoes so I used them during our first match then it was completely expected that I would let the other teacher borrow them for his matches. I'm fine with that, there is nothing wrong with sharing but where it might be crossing a line for me and my comfort level is the borrowing of socks as well. My strategy is to keep wearing the short socks that I prefer so that the other teacher will at least get his own socks. The thing I don't understand though is that this teacher spends more every month on satellite tv than the price of a pair of cleats. One more story about sharing, the guy that lives in the other half of the duplex doesn't have a fridge so he keeps some things at my house most of the time. No big deal, I don't use all the space and even if I did, its the right neighborly thing to do. So before the teachers' party there was a little pre-party braii in front of the duplex and they wanted to chill some beers for later. I gave them my key like normal and they put the beers in the freezer. Later on they went to fetch the beers so I thought everything was gone, out of the fridge. When I got home that night I didn't see anything in the fridge and assumed I was correct that they had gotton their beer earlier. This morning I opened the freezer. Liquids expand and there's not enough alcohol in beer to keep it from freezing and breaking the glass bottles. Luckily it ended up being an easy clean up but I have a nice picture of two liters worth of frozen beer and broken glass all over my freezer.

Lord of the Flies is one of those books that I wasn't required to read in high school, but so many people have read it that I feel a little left out. Despite hearing Bill O'Reilly rant several times about how awful the book is, I happened to find it used for a really good price and I have time to spare so now is a good time to catch up with everyone. The Pursuit of God is a reread but definitely a good enough book to be the classic that it is.

Playing guitar and getting ready to be gone for a couple weeks are really the same thing. There is no way I would travel with Cora even though I know I'm going to miss her while I'm gone. Hopefully someone else will have a guitar at reconnect. Love the one you're with, right? Maybe not. Packing is a bit of a challenge because I have to keep everything pretty compact but I will be gone for over two weeks. Luckily the word of Peace Corps is bring decent clothes but no mention of the business casual that we were subjected to throughout training. It will be interesting to see how our reconnect inservice training contrasts with the preservice training.

Have you ever tried to make chocolate, peanut butter, oatmeal cookies? A couple weeks ago I was trying to decide what kind of cookies I wanted and after looking through my recipes I decided just to put all of my favorites together. Tomorrow is the beginning of phase two in this experiment which means I have to write down what I put in instead of working off two recipes and guessing in between. From now I vow to only make chocolate, peanut butter, oatmeal cookies until the recipe is perfected and then I might share the recipe with you or I might just make you come visit me to get a taste of the wonderful combination that is chocolate, peanut butter and oatmeal.

One more thing, do a little search for DoubleShot Coffee Company (best coffee in Tulsa hand down) and read up on the letter they got from Starbucks threatening to sue over the use of the name DoubleShot. Thank you Brad for the link: www.doubleshotcoffee.com/blog

Still Got It

4/4 - I'm not entirely proud of this story but I am mostly proud of
myself so I will tell the story good and bad. So, the kids have been
writing exams (teachers set exams, learners write them) all last week
and will continue through Monday. Grade 10 wrote for me on Friday and
grade 9 was this morning (Tuesday). When the exam schedule was posted
there were also due dates for the teachers to submit their exams to
the secretaries to be typed and copied. I quickly figured out that
those due dates meant nothing because no one hit the first three
deadlines. My grade 10 exam was a little late but since I type my own
stuff I didn't feel bad about it at all. And I had it in early enough
to be able to staple it the night before the test instead of the
morning of like most teachers. I got a little busy last week and
started procrastinating setting the grade 9 exam but planned to finish
it Wednesday or Thursday once I finished marking (grading) all of
their homework. The homeworks took a while to mark, so I resolved to
stay up as late as I had to on Thursday to finish the exam before I
left for Windhoek. Well, one thing led to another and with the
uncertainty of the trip and the proliferation of insects around 8pm, I
went to bed on Thursday without starting the exam. I reasoned that if
the track meet was Friday and Saturday we would be home mid-afternoon
on Sunday and I could set the exam on Sunday so I could turn it in on
Monday. The day before the exam is plenty early, they won't duplicate
until the day before anyway. Well, we didn't get home until 11:30
Sunday night and I wasn't about to stay up working, so after my class
finishes their exam in the morning I'll go to the library and get my
exam ready for tomorrow. Except that my refrigerator and cupboards are
bare so when I found out I could get a hike to town at 11AM I had to
take it. Going to town normally doesn't take that long, but with all
the rain the direct route is impassable so it takes an extra hour each
direction taking the long road. I got home a little after 7pm with the
exam 12 hours away and not a question prepared yet. And I was already
planning to watch the NCAA championship game at 2AM. I confirmed the
time of tip-off, wrote half the test, set my alarm for 1:45AM and went
to bed around 9:30. After four hours of sleep I ate some granola and
yogurt and made coffee to take with me to the library. I watched the
first half and then during halftime started working on the exam. By
about 4AM I was done with the exam and got to relax for the impressive
although not dramatic finish of the game. I still can't get over the
Florida player hustling after a loose ball with 30 seconds left and a
double digit lead. Once I watched a little more ESPN, CNN and MTV I
went home to shower, change clothes and have some more granola, yogurt
and coffee. Having been gone the entire weekend I missed my laundry
day so I put enough clothes to get me through the week in a bucket to
soak during school. I still had to get back to the library by 6:20 to
get the exam onto a floppy and take it to the office for final editing
and printing. Luckily everything went off without a hitch and now I
have 125 exams to mark. I've been out of school for almost a year, but
my procrastinating abilities are still sharp. This one felt a little
different than putting off that big paper though, because it wasn't
just my grade at stake, I had to show my work to 125 kids who never
need to know when I finished setting their exam. Now I'm ready to
catch up on marking grade 10 exams and go to bed early tonight, once I
get my clothes off the line.

My birthday was quiet and relaxing. I left school an hour early to
take a nap and didn't do any more work the rest of the day. I made
myself pizza and chocolate cake with Coke for dinner which was
wonderful. I bought mozzarella cheese and made my own crust, sauce and
topped it with hamburger and the most important ingredient on a pizza,
crushed red pepper. The cake turned out really well but I was worried,
after the prescribed 35 minutes of baking it wasn't even close to done
but after 55 minutes the knife came out clean and I added my makeshift
frosting (condensed milk, sugar, carmel flavor and vanilla). Now I
just have to eat it in the next few days before it goes bad, poor me.
My cell phone antenna got installed yesterday but it doesn't seem to
be working properly. Progress is nice though. Thanks for all the
birthday greetings.

From March 25

25 March – After my chance with Internet in the library it has been
non-functional for the rest of the week. I set it to dial for hours on
end and now all I get is a busy signal. I'm sure that's a metaphor for
something but I don't care. I just want the internet to work again.
Last night I tried to commit an unforgivable sin of literature, I
showed the kids Harry Potter 2 on video in lieu of reading the book.
However I was stifled by 70 of the worst behaved movie goers so I am
watching it this morning while I try once again to connect to the
Internet. I didn't intend to try the internet this morning but I
forgot to turn off my alarm and in spite of all that is good about
Saturday I was wide awake at 5:30 AM. Now I just have to finish
watching Harry Potter and reading Dr. Zhivago so I can read the third
and fourth installments of the Harry Potter series.

Yesterday I had hoped to get a hike to town but the teacher I was to
ride with ditched the entire day of school. I need to buy groceries
and more candy to sell from the library. In three days my library
workers sold about 300 pieces of candy and 40 lolly pops. After being
home the kids have money and they are ready to spend it. Why not
channel some of that towards the library? I didn't get to go to town
but it was for the best. After it rained all night on Wednesday some
people had tried to go on Thursday but turned back because the road
was too bad. Then on Friday at 12:30 the rain started and quickly
became a downpour. School ended but no one went anywhere. Some of the
kids made a run for it to get to their lunch but most decided to wait.
I had a bunch of papers and my camera and no umbrella so I had no
choice. By 1:30 all the learners and teachers had ventured out and I
was left with my bag watching the rain fall. Whats worse is that I
would have left my bad in the library and just got my clothes wet but
I had lent the library keys to a teacher who had disappeared. After an
hour and a half of unrelenting rain I rearranged my bag for least
possible damage, removed my shoes and socks and jogged home through
rain and several large puddles. Once I changed clothes I had a
wonderful afternoon reading and drinking coffee. I'm glad I didn't
read Dr. Zhivago when Yevtechenko assigned it in class and I am glad
to have read it now. One interesting thing is when the main
characters, Lara and Zhivago speak to one another, Pasternak doesn't
clarify who is speaking, you have to follow the dialog closely because
the characters voices blend together to show how close they are. Just
now I thought this quote was said by Zhivago, then I corrected myself,
thinking it was Lara speaking and then I realized that it was in fact
Zhivago.

"I don't think I could love you so much if you had nothing to complain
of and nothing to regret. I don't like people who have never fallen or
stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and of little value. Life hasn't
revealed its beauty to them."

25 March – Not having the Internet is harder now that I have had it.
I'm showing the kids Freaky Friday right now so I decided it was a
good time to write a little. My Friday, yesterday, was less than
perfect. At morning assembly I found out that two boys from my class
were caught making inappropriate comments to one of the girls. This is
the culmination of my class morphing into the worst in the entire
school. They started the year off great so I was hoping that they
would see the other classes being rewarded and band together to shape
up. Some of the kids are well behaved but there are several that are
almost out of control. Another teacher is dealing with this first
incident, but I had a serious talk with my class on Friday and plan to
babysit them for the rest of the term. Silence during study time,
strict attendance and punishment as necessary. I'm not sure what the
punishment will be but I think they will be doing a lot of cleaning or
their parents will get called into the office.

You know you've enjoyed a book when you are sad to finish it. I
polished off Dr. Zhivago this morning, partly because I wanted to keep
reading it and partly because I wanted to start the third Harry Potter
book.

my picks from the sweet sixteen

I shouldn't post this but ...

1 villanova villanova
4 boston college villanova
3 florida florida
7 georgetown
gonzaga
1 memphis memphis
13 bradley gonzaga
3 gonzaga gonzaga
2 ucla
duke
1 duke duke
4 lsu duke
6 west virginia west virginia
2 texas
duke
1 connecticut uconn
5 washington WSU
11 george mason WSU
7 wichita state

Since everyones bracket has been thoroughly messed up, except mine
because for the first time in as long as I can remember I didn't fill
out a bracket, its time for second chance picks. Start with the sweet
sixteen and see how it goes. Here are my picks:
Villanova over Florida
Gonzaga over Memphis
Duke over West Virginia
Wichita State over UCONN

I'm not sure of how the regions are paired so I might be wrong on this
but I like Duke over Gonzaga for the title. The rest of the games are
implied by the subsequent winners. I went with experience on this one,
West Virginia made a run last year and would be in the Final Four
except that no sane basketball fan can pick against the trio of
Sheldon Williams, JJ Redick and Coach K. Redick has hit too many big
shots, played in too many tournament games and he makes free throws. I
don't like UCONN and how cool would it be to see WSU in the Final Four
with Gonzaga and Villanova completely bucking the trend of schools
that also play D1 football competing for the title in basketball. And
seriously its about time for Gonzaga to take another step forward.

These tournament selections have been independently verified to have
been made at 20:55 on the 22nd of March 2006.

Windhoek

Time is short at the Internet Cafe so this will be rapid fire. Internet has been nonfunctional at home for almost two weeks. I got an antenna and a cell phone from Peace Corps but no SIM card so I couldn't use the phone. I got a SIM card today and will be installing the antenna this week. Thursday I learned that a majority of our kids were not going to be allowed to compete at Nationals this weekend. Friday morning at 6:45 I found out that we had a ride for our one remaining athlete to go to Windhoek for the competition. Lots of dirt and paved road later I climbed out of the back of the truck in the capital. The other teachers I was with didn't want to be officials at the competition so I measured about 400 javelin throws in two days. My legs are sore. I stayed one night with the kids in the hostel and another with some other PCVs and had a great time. Good dinner, great breakfast. I bought soccer cleats for myself for my birthday at the new mall in Windhoek. I like Windhoek. Time to go home for two weeks before reconnect.