These last few weeks have kinda crawled by. Though my time here is coming to a close, these last few weeks seems to go by even slower. Emily Yoder (one of my pals from Thailand) arrived here last Thursday. She’ll be here til I finish teaching. So now there are 5 other foreigners here to keep me company.
Interestingly enough, life here at this school has become quite normal for me. It’s normal to take a shower by pouring buckets of water over my head; it’s normal to share a room with 3 other girls; it’s normal to have no privacy; it’s normal to eat rice filled with bugs; it’s normal not to have 24 hour electricity; It’s normal to be called “Cher” constantly (the 2nd half of the word “teacher”); it’s normal to wash my clothes by hand. Most of the time I’ve been here, I’ve thought that going back to the States would be no problem, but the longer I’m here, the more I think it’ll be pretty shocking. It’ll take a little while to get used to civilization again…
Teaching has been getting easier as I get to know my students better. They are no longer afraid to ask me questions, and we have good times in class.
We’ve started up a Pathfinder group with grades 9 and 10. Not that it’s run like a normal Pathfinders would be run. Us volunteers are just trying to get the older students to learn how to be leaders so that if we’re not around, they can do they’re own Pathfinders. These last couple weeks have been pretty rough. Chris has been trying to do the Physical Fitness honor with them, and I’ve been teaching them marching. I had a hard time remembering all the commands and which foot to call things on, so I promptly called up the marching expert (my dad) and had him refresh my memory. It’s especially entertaining watching the students try to do an “about face.”
We’ve also started having Wednesday night Bible studies with just us volunteers and Tim and Wendy. So far they have gone well, though I find myself almost falling asleep by the end because I’m used to going to bed early… It’s pretty easy to when the electricity goes out at 9 pm–there’s just nothing you can do in the dark. But the Bible study is nice just to have a time when we can talk to each other in normal English and be understood without having to simplify our simplifications. I really think I’ve forgotten a lot of English words…
Well, time marches on, and I know this will be over sooner than I think.
