BO-RING!

So my sister seems to think all I do is travel and have fun, and let’s face it, it’s hard not to when you’re me! Haha no but really I write a blog once a month and I don’t wanna write about the boring day to day stuff so I wait for something big and fun to happen so it just seems like all we do is have fun! Anyway so thanks to miray this blog will be all about the day-to-day stuff! Well for starters I wake up at 6am every morning like clockwork these days to pee. I don’t know why but 6am rolls around and I just can’t hold it any longer and I have to leave the comfort of my bed and stumble through our yard to pee… no fun! I can usually fall back asleep pretty easily, but then at 6:50am-ish the elementary kids sing the national anthem and it’s so loud and off pitch that it sounds like they’re inside the house! so I usually wake up for that and then try to go back to sleep… usually about 7:30am is when our 9th graders start coming by the house to ask for any number of things from water, tutoring, breakfast, games, or just our company, and force me to get out of bed once again. When I finally make it to the door the kids are usually all in an uproar cuz I’m still sleeping… most everyone here starts there day at like 5am so they don’t understand how we could possibly sleep in until 8AM!!! I mean I can’t remember the last time I got to sleep in undisturbed til like 10am! DOUBLE DIGITS I MISS YOU! So then with kids coming and going and trying to wake up, I’ll eat breakfast and make sure I’m ready for my classes. We try to have all our lesson plans done at least the night before, so I may look over my notes just to make sure I don’t need to take any other extra props in or anything. This second trimester von and I decided to have some fun with our 11th graders and have music Fridays! So far we’ve done ‘california waiting – kings of leon’ ‘forever – chris brown’ ‘mo money mo problems - biggie’ ‘don’t stop believin – journey’ and ‘no air – jordin & chris.’ We usually start the class with some kind of review of a simple grammar point that may be in the song. Then we do vocabulary from the lyrics and then we write the lyrics up on the board with blanks for the vocab and then play the song for them to listen to the lyrics and fill in the blanks. Usually after the 2nd time through I’ll pause and actually go over the lyrics and kinda try to explain what the song is about. And then I’ll play the song until class is over and it pretty much just turns into a crazy dance fest! It’s really fun and the kids enjoy it because they get to listen to music and learn lyrics! This week we’re doing ‘waving flag – k’naan’ for a little Africa pride and then next week we’re doing the ‘cha cha slide’!!!! haha we’re takin it back old school and teaching them some sweeet dance moves! We already did it once at Dillon’s school and it was really fun so hopefully our kids will get a kick out of it too! Although… she only had 25ish kids in her class and we’ll have like 70 so… we’ll see! With 9th grade I’ve had to begin each class with conjugating the verb ‘to be’ in the present or past tense. Even if they don’t learn anything else in my class, I WILL ENGRAVE the conjugation of ‘to be’ in their brains by the end of the year! Oh last weekend von was really sick and so I had to fill in for her at her science fair meeting. It was only the second meeting so I had to give them notes on scientific method. The lesson part actually wasn’t terrible. I remember it pretty well and von’s notes were great so I made it through the lecture part and then von wanted me to split them into groups and have to talk about potential topic ideas and walk around to talk to each of them and that’s when it got a little hairy… these kids would talk a mile a minute cuz they’re excited about their topic and I would just look at them and smile and say ‘oh that sounds like a really interesting idea! you should definitely come by the house this week to tell it to teacher Yvonne and she can help you form it into an experiment.’ I still don’t know what half the topics were about let alone if they were even remotely feasible as science fair experiments! I never once in my life participated in science fair! I’ve never even made one of those volcano things! Ooh it started getting kinda chilly at night here so we’ve had to start heating up water to take our bucket baths and some nights I go to bed in sweats and a sweatshirt! It’s awesome! Oh we totally made an awesome new Mozambican friend! We’re integrating!! About a month ago I started tutoring one of our fellow teachers in English. Ana Paula is a 22 year old, super stylish, French teacher. She’s new this year as well and she’s just really awesome. At first I thought she was super shy and timid, and I guess she is kinda, but once I started talking to her more and getting to know her, we’ve realized she’s super funny and way way way ahead of pop culture! We find out what music is popular from her~ haha it’s great. So last week we had her over for dinner and made a Mexican feast of chips and salsa, beef taquitos, and Mexican rice. I recently learned how to make Mexican rice from scratch through von’s mom and I’m pretty pumped to have it in my repertoire! On the weekends we try to do at least one home improvement project and this weekend we made a photo collage hangy art piece thing and painted a few ‘chalkboards’ in the house. they’re pretty exciting and they also cover up all the places where the wall peeled off from duct tape, ahem erin and nia ahem. But yeah our house is definitely shaping up and while I’m sad that we’ll only be here for 19 more months, I’m pretty excited for whoever replaces us! Hope they like green and chalkboards! OH OH OH I also found out last week that Pat O got her invitation to PC Mozambique! SO exciting! Congrats and I can’t wait to see you!!! I’m working on a packing list for ya so hang tight! Ok so I got kinda side tracked on the day-to-day life thing, but I’m too tired to write more so I’ll try to write more next time! Love and miss everyone! e money out