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Thursday, November 26, 2009

April 24, 2009

I just started teaching this week. After a period of travel and a month of inaction the school year started without warning (classes supposedly began two weeks ago but the first day is pretty flexible). The school dropped all the math and physics classes on me, so I have more classes than any four other teachers combined. For the first time since I left America I feel like I’ve been working, waking up at 5:30 to prepare classes and standing in front of students for six hours a day. My situation has been immensely complicated by the erratic electricity (see below) – but we should get a mathematics teacher within the next few weeks, brining my courseload back to a normal level.
I find teaching material the second time around isn’t nearly as interesting, and I enjoy my form VI classes much more than my form V. Part of that are the students, the older students are more comfortable in the classroom, answer questions more readily… and there are a lot less of them. I’m not so impressed with the new ones, but we’ll give them some time.
I realize I haven’t update for over two months, ever since the marathon in Kilimanjaro. Mostly I’ve been busy, and when I have had free time the power was dead – for the last three weeks we’ve only had some six hours of electricity a day, mostly at night. I’ve spent a lot more time with my VSO friends across the street, partly because they have reliable electricity and food processors and lots of other goodies that I can’t usually get here.
Erina returned last week, but she plans on spending every weekend from here on out away from site – she likes traveling. My students are also gradually returning to school, if not to class.

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