To Rain or Not to Rain; That is THE Question

We are on the cusp of rainy season!

This morning I awoke to a gray sky and it reminded me of home. Not too long after I woke up I watched as the clouds were moving swiftly across the sky. Moments later, the wind picked up and swirled leaves around on the ground that I just had cleaned yesterday. It was strong enough that it blew open my front gate, which I thought was firmly closed! And I could hear the quick patter and flop-flops of little feet running home, mixed in with the excited/nervous screaming of small people voices. And then slowly but surely came the rain. Single sounding fat drops that plopped against my tin roof. More and more drops fell and I retreated into the house and picked up a book, Angels and Demons and waited till the bulk of the storm had passed.

Then I decided I was hungry…and now I am in the process of making bagels. This will be my first ever batch of bagels. I will eat them with a packet of Lachs, (yes Lachs, not Lox; though I am fairly certain they are the same thing) that Catherine cadeau-ed me before she left. ***Thanks Catherine!*** I am currently waiting for the dough to double in size before making them into bagel shapes.

The rain this morning reminded me of a story. A couple weeks ago, Monday morning I was teaching my 6eme M3 class. It was just about 9 o’clock. I was quite irritated with some kids in class because they were causing me trouble and I was ready to cut out of class 20 minutes early. And as I was gathering my things together, I looked outside to see the blackest 9 o’clock sky I had ever seen! The humongous black cloud looked like it was ten feet off the ground and it was slowly making its way toward us. The air became quite chilly. The boys were pulling their arms into their sleeves and the girls were wrapping themselves up with the pieces of cloth they usually use to block the sun from their heads and faces. Everyone was rubbing their hands and arms to generate some heat. I felt nothing but bliss.

The big black cloud all heavy with rain made all the colors so bright and vivid! There is one particular type of bush that my school utilizes as a wall-perimeter around the school grounds. The flowers of this bush are a bright lemon yellow color. With the black monster as a background, I thought to myself that bush has never looked so green nor those flowers so yellow! How beautiful! And then moments later the wind was picking up. This was no little breeze. This was like hurricane wind, like The Wizard of Oz wind that picked up Dorothy and Toto and the Wicked Witch of the West. My students all at once ran to the other side of the room all the while screaming like four year old little girls. The rain was now pounding and the wind in full force. The roof in corner of the room where the teacher’s “desk” is, was lifting up! I for sure thought that the entire portion of the roof that covers our classroom was going to lift up. And it made such a terrible sound; quite the opposite lovely sound rain makes as it hits the tin roof. And then I found myself among my students huddled outside the classroom behind the safety of the wall. And I thought of myself as a mother hen huddled with her chicks caught in a rainstorm.

In other news, this past Thursday, I left the house perhaps a quarter to seven for my 7am class. I had let the dog out around 7:30am thinking that she would have come back before I left. But that dog is one clever little gal. She has a knack for knowing when I am in a hurry to leave. I figured she would be okay outside, running around, causing mischief while I was at school. I thought that I was out of her sight; and I hopped onto a zem. As we got to the highway, the zems waiting for customers all pointed behind us and said “eh, regarde…tchuku!” which translates to “hey, look…they dog!” Practically everyone in the neighborhood knows my dog and sometimes her name. I told the zem to stop. But most likely, he doesn’t know French and didn’t stop even though he saw that my dog was following us. JERK! I finally got him to stop after we were on the highway and Rosie was still following. She was a panting and looked a little disoriented (she’s never been to this part of the neighborhood) and a little excited and happy with herself. I managed to nab her and made the zem take us back to my house where I locked her in. Stupid dog! I ended up paying a little extra for my ride to school because of her.

And later in the morning, Basile, a kid from 6eme M3 who’s been absent from class recently came into my other class—6eme M2 to say hello. All of a sudden kids in M2 were all in an uproar of laughter as they told me to look at what Basile was wearing. Sure enough, I look down at his feet and he is wearing REAL wooden clogs! How in the world and where in the world did this kid get these shoes?!

Au Benin!

old skool pics!

my favorite class.
class in a paillote. it's got a great breeze!
no powerpoints here. it looks like a chalkboard, but it's really some plywood painted black.
groupwork.
workin' on a wordsearch (that i made up myself)
not everyone likes to work together.
next to a cornfield.
building to the right is what my predecessor built. the building in the back is where the other 5eme classes are.
football (aka soccer field) on the other side. and latrines is what that little building in next to board is.


my bad ass bike
Rosie hiding in my closet.
up close.
i made this. mmmm, it was real good! watch out pagliacci's!

burning out

Be careful for what you wish for…because usually, it comes true!

You may recall that at the beginning of the school year, I was struggling and lost the battle to take a class that I had last year. And then my colleague who was their teacher had her baby, back in January/February…and I was able to take over her class. And it was super exciting at first.

And then the 18 hour work week was really starting to get to me; especially the waking up super early for the 7 am classes three times a week! Eeew! I know you all know that I am NOT a morning person; so this had been kinda like torture. And mix that with the SUPER hot days were having and you get one grumpy girl, also known as Michelle.

So, at our weekly English staff meetings I had been trying to figure out if Madame was going to come back…and it turns out she did! And she came back when she said she was! My standards have been lowered :-/ And as a result, I told the 5eme class (the non-favorite class) that I was letting them go, that they’d be getting their old teacher back…ahhh, the tears I caused! No, not really, but the majority were outspokenly opposed. Oh the little cuties…So I think it’s gonna be a smidge awkward as I make my way out to their class. 5m4 is in the paillote (sp?) classroom. A paillote is a nice-ish stick shack, flimsy, sometimes a thatched roof—we have tin roofs instead; thatched ones are cooler, and breezy! I wish we had paillotes back home. But I don’t think that the weather is very conducive to them.

I have to admit that I am starting to burn out. Every day is something new. And whether I plan it out or not, every day is a busy day. And that sucks, especially when I don’t have a car, the sun is punching you in the face, you sweat more than a fat man in a sauna, and there’s no time to take a nap.

Today was a market day. I met up with my post mate Nathaniel and Sarah to pick out même tissue = same fabric for our Mono (department) hoodies! We’ll be showing some solidarity at our COS conference, which is coming up sooner than I wish it would. I feel like there is much to do before then, and it’s getting in the way of what I need to do…but I am also looking forward to it a lot.

Peace Corps is putting us up in a really nice hotel with air conditioning, a nice pool, and WI-FI and CNN (satellite TV) in our rooms!!!!!!!!!!

That’s all for now. I am super tired and going to sleep.

PS
I finished up two books this week:
The Red Tent—A really good book about Jacob’s one and only daughter, Dinah. I highly recommend this book.
and
The Sex Lives of Cannibals—An entertaining travelogue about this guy and his fiancé who move to the Equitorial Pacific island nation, of Kiribati (did you know it’s pronounced “Keer-E-bas?”). It’s one of those cross-cultural books. It’s good, not as good as I heard it built up to be, but entertaining.