Welcome back

I knew that I was coming into the capital today to get some work done and so I made a concerted effort to write some blog posts ahead of time! Isn’t that so great of me? You’ll have things to read for a week maybe.

Summer vacation is officially over. My lab is finally all set up and all computers except one are working like a champ (meaning I fixed two that had broke last year, kudos to me), I’ve organized my life, created lesson plans, syllabuses and am prepared to be so much meaner to these kids this year so they will listen to me when I talk. I took all my “fancy” clothes to the tailors to get zippers repaired and a few new things made, my neighbors and I had our final party and all the students arrive on Sunday. It’s really happening folks, Monday 10am, going to teach some 12 year olds how to use a mouse. Boom.

And since that is the case I feel I should give a recap of my summer. I mentioned before what I was planning on doing and that all happened. I went to Ghana and it was so wonderful, I dreamed about it for weeks afterwards and still think about that fried rice w/chicken, fresh lobster and the ocean. I worked stage, met a bunch of the now new volunteers. It was pretty exciting, the worst part of it though was that I had to speak English and I found that my English speaking abilities are terrible. I may seem alright writing this, but when I speak I sound like I never finished elementary school and was kicked in the head as a child. I cannot picture myself this time next year without cringing at how awkward I’m going to be. Several of the newbies said that they thought the volunteers were possibly mentally deficient because they were so bad at speaking English. Hah!

Then I was at site for a month, which was actually incredibly boring. Because it was only August, naturally I didn’t do any work that was easily procrastinated until now, so I mostly just read a lot (anything by Nabokov and Hemmingway’s To Have and Have Not, are highly recommended), slept and watched my neighbors play scrabble and drink tea. They are so good at that game, it’s ridiculous.

And then we had our mid-service conference. That was a great time, seeing all the kids from my training, we’re all really comfortable here now and I greatly enjoyed those few days seeing everyone and catching up.

Then I did that summer camp with my neighbors. It was really fun and super tiring. I think in the next post there will be some pictures. We made a piñata for the closing ceremonies. Those kids went bat shit crazy over it. Blew their little minds.

And now here we are, ready for school again. I can’t believe how fast the summer went by, which means that before I know it, it will be Christmas and then I’m essentially done. You like that? By Christmas I’m essentially done. I just skip right over those other 5 months of school and summer. They aren’t important.