Usually, when things are not going well here, it's pretty obvious to me. And there have definitely been some rough patches in the last sixteen months, but I kind of thought things were going okay now. It's hot, but not too hot, and most of my students are coming to school and some of them even seem to be learning. I can speak French and get by in Mandara and Fulfulde, I have friends and work and I don't have malaria. But as some of you have probably noticed, lately when I talk to people at home, all that comes out is a whole lot of negativity. I set out trying to tell a story about how wonderful my seniors are, and end up instead complaining about how annoyed I am with the discipline master at my school. And then I shout at a bunch of small children. I've been trying to figure out where all this negativity is coming from, and I have three possible ideas: 1) Everything kind of sucks, but I have only realized this subconsciously; 2) Everything is fine, but I am just really cranky and perceiving it all negatively; and 3) I have just become an awful storyteller. Regardless of which scenario is correct, I thought maybe I would try to write a blog entry focusing on five awesome things that are going on in my life right now.
1) My seniors are amazing.
Seriously – these kids are the coolest (and the smartest). About 80% of them passed their English exams this sequence, and about half of them wrote smart, insightful, eloquent (and, okay, often depressing) essays on the topic of unemployment. Because we finished exam review early last week, we had a spelling bee (something they had never heard of before, but got really excited about), which turned into a really cool opportunity for them to practice pronunciation, go over vocabulary, and shout “CORRUPTION!” at each other when they refused to leave the stage after making a mistake. These students call me out if I am late or unprepared and are always asking to have discussions or do another exercise to practice for the Bac (while most of my other students complain if I ask them to do anything other than copy off the board). Teaching them is a delight and the best part of my week.
2) We didn't get evacuated.
The election is over, results have been announced, all is quiet, and we get to finish our last few months of service. We also are not on standfast anymore, which means we can leave post. Pretty sweet.
3) My house is successfully catproofed.
Things had been going pretty well with Nagano...until she figured out how to break into my house. I'd been putting her outside at night (I have a high wall around my yard so she can't get out, and she doesn't like being shut in when she could be out hunting), which was going okay (except that she would sit outside and cry at 5 a.m. every day – not because she was hungry or thirsty, she just wanted to hang out...) until one night, around midnight, I was startled to wake up to see her sitting at the end of my bed, meowing excitedly. I figured she had maybe snuck in as I was closing the door, and put her back outside...only to be woken up an hour later by her clawing at my mosquito net and meowing triumphantly (yes, it was more than a little startling). It took a couple nights of this for me to figure out how she was getting in – my house is cement with only two windows, which are barred and have screens over them. Finally I guessed that she was jumping off my water bidons and forcing her way underneath the screen, then crawling in through my bedroom window. I moved the bidons and shut the window and still woke up with her in my bed in the middle of the night, crying to go back outside. I spent the better part of this week setting cat booby traps, to block her entrance or make the window an unpleasant place to enter through (I'm not going to lie, she had more than one cup of water dumped on her head). Finally, creating a window blockade out of my PC medical kit (just kidding?), tupperware, and old clothing, and through the strategic placement of duct tape, it is now impossible for the cat to break into my house.
4) It's almost cold season.
A glass-half-empty person might say instead that in reality, it's the beginning of “petit hot season” (November is going to be WARM), but a month from now I may even be sleeping with a blanket and putting a sweatshirt on in the morning (okay, it's likely I'll take it off like an hour later when the sun comes up, but still. A sweatshirt!). This also means that the rain is finished, which is a bummer, but that means that the power will stay on pretty much all the time until maybe May (barring any ridiculous telephone wire/power company bill drama like last year...). It ALSO means that there will soon be a lot of delicious food at the market. We've already got delicious heirloom tomatoes, and in December we may even have cabbage and carrots – in village! (To put this in perspective, the market normally has tomatoes and onions...which are delicious, but get old...)
5) My brother is coming to visit.
Cold season also means it will be December, which is when my brother is taking vacation from his work in Madagascar to come spend Christmas and New Year's in Cameroon. There will be some crazy frogging expeditions in the south, then some awesome (awkward?) hangouts with my friends in village. Pretty exciting, particularly since it will be the first time since June 2010 that I will see someone who knew me before June 2010.
So, no matter what ridiculous stories I tell you, things are in fact pretty great here. Thanks as always for all your love and support. Special shout out to Kyle for his awesome package filled with coffee, fake cheese products, and Del Scorcho sauce (yummm). You're the best!
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Friday, October 14, 2011
Assemblee Generale
Every year, we begin the annee scolaire with an assemblee generale, or general meeting. This is basically the first staff meeting of the year, an opportunity for all the teachers to introduce themselves, and to go over some basic policies and the schedule for the year. These meetings can run anywhere from one hour to six hours, depending on how much your principal likes to talk and whether your school runs on real time or Cameroonian time (which is usually at least an hour or two behind). At last year's assemblee generale, I found myself in a dusty room with fifteen strangers (and several lizards). I was the only woman, the only white person, the only one who couldn't speak French, and pretty clearly the youngest person in the room. I have never felt more overwhelmed or out of place in my life. I sat through three hours of introductions and statistics and policies (of which I maybe understood 10%) and spent the entire time trying to keep myself alternately from falling asleep or bursting into tears. I bolted at the first opportunity, claiming I had a Peace Corps meeting in Maroua (which was kind of true...except that the “meeting” was at a bar).
This year, I showed up ten minutes late (still well before the meeting started) and greeted several friends before sitting down. We now had tables in our teacher's lounge (as opposed to the beginning of last year, when there was just a sad handful of plastic lawn chairs) and we pulled them into a circle and sat behind them, with my principal at the head table, the new vice principal and discipline master on either side. The principal wore a beautiful, spotless white boubou (traditional menswear consisting of a long flowing dress-like garment with matching pants underneath; or, as an American friend of mine calls it, “wizard's robes”). The vice principal next to him wore a jean suit (yup, jacket and pants. Cameroonians love their Texas Tuxedos), while the discipline master opted for the middle ground of Western-style dress pants and a button down shirt. When we started – only about 45 minutes later than the time written on the board – there were about twenty of us in the room, including six (!) other women (last year at a Peace Corps training with my principal, I complained about the difficulty of being the only woman on staff; the principal was shocked and immediately set about hiring as many women as possible for this school year).
We opened with introductions, giving only the essentials: our names, the subjects we taught, and our marital status (I said I was engaged; other responses included “Single...but looking” and “Single”, followed by another teacher shouting “Yeah but how many kids do you have?” and everybody laughing). Then the principal began the meeting in earnest. To keep myself entertained, I took notes (in English...or, well, in Franglais). Here are some of the highlights from the principal's speech:
-Neither the principal or Americans like wasting time, so our school will run efficiently
-Computer technology will be mandatory this year...so we should probably get some computers...or at least get the school's electricity turned on...
-We have well-behaved students. They do not attack their teachers.
-It's good to have a mixed staff. Especially if the women are single (this part was added by our gym teacher...).
-The principal is not a sorceror. He will not know your problems unless you tell him.
-It's a good idea to plan your classes before you go to teach them. Also, it's not a good idea to teach your entire class with your back to your students.
-Our quatriemes (8th graders) suck, but everyone else is pretty okay.
-Be nice to your students, but not too nice.
-Please fill out the class logbooks (which say what you did in class that day). Please do not steal them.
-Don't wear your gym clothes to school unless you are a gym teacher.
-Please don't be an alcoholic. You can drink as much wine as you want, just as long as the students can't tell. Also, please don't share your bil-bil (traditional millet beer) with the students. And don't accept alcohol in return for doing favors for your students.
-Don't put your butts on the table. It's not hygienic. (this is a direct quote, by the way...)
-Our school doesn't have any money. Oh, but we will find a way to pay you...
Aside from the things that made me laugh, the principal also said a lot of things that reminded me how lucky I am to have such a smart, progressive, non-corrupt counterpart, and to work at a school with such wonderful students. 75% of our 6th graders continued on to 7th grade (which is VERY high – for more on these great kids, see my “Ode to 6eme” blog entry from last year), and almost 50% of our 3emes (9th graders) and 1eres (Juniors) passed their incredibly difficult national exams. The year before it was more like 20%. And it's true – our students are incredibly well-behaved. Not only have I never been attacked (I did not actually realize this was a possibility...) but I have very few kids who even talk out of turn or fight amongst themselves during class, and only a handful of cheaters (all in the lower grades).
The principal also pointed out that because we are a smaller school and we have much smaller classes than most places (25 in Terminale, 60-some in Premiere...a friend of mine 10 kilometers away has 180 in her premiere class), we can have more interesting classes. We can do experiments and play games rather than just lecturing. This is an incredibly progressive idea here, as most teachers were taught by copying notes off the board with little explanation or practice, and expect their students to do the same. With all the women on staff this year, the principal is also making Girl's Club mandatory (for female staff members and students), which is an awesome opportunity for girls from the village to get some role models (the number of educated, independent women in their lives is extremely limited).
I was surprised at how often the principal brought me into the conversation (every third sentence seemed to end with “Eh, Rose?” or “N'est-ce pas, Rose?” -- another incentive to pay attention). At first I thought he was teasing me. Then I thought he was just showing off his foreigner to the new staff members. Then I realized that I was actually one of the senior staff members in the room, and one of the only people who was there last year who saw the things he was talking about, and he might actually be calling on me as a professional because he wanted others to hear my opinions and experiences. How strange! (In reality, it was probably some combination of the three...)
Anyways, it was a good start to the school year, and another nice reminder of how much has changed since last year. Not that everything is perfect – last Thursday, for example, immediately after I finished exam review in all my classes (for exams that were supposed to start the coming Monday), I was informed that we would have normal classes instead next week, as the new vice principal had been put in charge of organizing and typing up all the exams, and it turns out he doesn't know how to use a computer...Oh Cameroon.
It's been a funny couple of weeks here...the election was last weekend, so we were told by Peace Corps not to leave our villages, and to pack an emergency bag with ID and a change of clothes and to keep a low profile (which is super easy here when you're white...), etc. Basically I was expecting at any minute to have a motorcycle pull up at my door with a note from Peace Corps telling me to grab what I could carry and get whisked away to Morocco. In reality, I had a quiet Sunday at home with my cat. It's been quite interesting to observe the politics here, and while I'm not sure how much I can really say on the subject right now while I'm still in country, I will say that I am definitely appreciative of being a citizen of a country where you're allowed to say what you think about the political situation and vote in elections that are free and fair. There were a couple of riots down south before the elections, but since then, everything has been quiet here, and is likely to be until the results come in (probably later this month). You never know what will happen, and with all that has gone on in other African countries in the past couple years people are on edge, but the general attitude I get here is that people are dissatisfied but apathetic. A striking example of this came to me a few days ago, when I was sitting with a friend in village who was going on about a certain politician visiting a nearby city “to tell his lies”...meanwhile this same friend was wearing a t-shirt supporting said politician's political party. Anyways, for now, it's business as usual and I'm keeping busy in village teaching and grading and trying to come up with an explanation for my students as to why Americans say “I don't have a pen” rather than “I haven't a pen”, but would say “I haven't been to New York.”
This year, I showed up ten minutes late (still well before the meeting started) and greeted several friends before sitting down. We now had tables in our teacher's lounge (as opposed to the beginning of last year, when there was just a sad handful of plastic lawn chairs) and we pulled them into a circle and sat behind them, with my principal at the head table, the new vice principal and discipline master on either side. The principal wore a beautiful, spotless white boubou (traditional menswear consisting of a long flowing dress-like garment with matching pants underneath; or, as an American friend of mine calls it, “wizard's robes”). The vice principal next to him wore a jean suit (yup, jacket and pants. Cameroonians love their Texas Tuxedos), while the discipline master opted for the middle ground of Western-style dress pants and a button down shirt. When we started – only about 45 minutes later than the time written on the board – there were about twenty of us in the room, including six (!) other women (last year at a Peace Corps training with my principal, I complained about the difficulty of being the only woman on staff; the principal was shocked and immediately set about hiring as many women as possible for this school year).
We opened with introductions, giving only the essentials: our names, the subjects we taught, and our marital status (I said I was engaged; other responses included “Single...but looking” and “Single”, followed by another teacher shouting “Yeah but how many kids do you have?” and everybody laughing). Then the principal began the meeting in earnest. To keep myself entertained, I took notes (in English...or, well, in Franglais). Here are some of the highlights from the principal's speech:
-Neither the principal or Americans like wasting time, so our school will run efficiently
-Computer technology will be mandatory this year...so we should probably get some computers...or at least get the school's electricity turned on...
-We have well-behaved students. They do not attack their teachers.
-It's good to have a mixed staff. Especially if the women are single (this part was added by our gym teacher...).
-The principal is not a sorceror. He will not know your problems unless you tell him.
-It's a good idea to plan your classes before you go to teach them. Also, it's not a good idea to teach your entire class with your back to your students.
-Our quatriemes (8th graders) suck, but everyone else is pretty okay.
-Be nice to your students, but not too nice.
-Please fill out the class logbooks (which say what you did in class that day). Please do not steal them.
-Don't wear your gym clothes to school unless you are a gym teacher.
-Please don't be an alcoholic. You can drink as much wine as you want, just as long as the students can't tell. Also, please don't share your bil-bil (traditional millet beer) with the students. And don't accept alcohol in return for doing favors for your students.
-Don't put your butts on the table. It's not hygienic. (this is a direct quote, by the way...)
-Our school doesn't have any money. Oh, but we will find a way to pay you...
Aside from the things that made me laugh, the principal also said a lot of things that reminded me how lucky I am to have such a smart, progressive, non-corrupt counterpart, and to work at a school with such wonderful students. 75% of our 6th graders continued on to 7th grade (which is VERY high – for more on these great kids, see my “Ode to 6eme” blog entry from last year), and almost 50% of our 3emes (9th graders) and 1eres (Juniors) passed their incredibly difficult national exams. The year before it was more like 20%. And it's true – our students are incredibly well-behaved. Not only have I never been attacked (I did not actually realize this was a possibility...) but I have very few kids who even talk out of turn or fight amongst themselves during class, and only a handful of cheaters (all in the lower grades).
The principal also pointed out that because we are a smaller school and we have much smaller classes than most places (25 in Terminale, 60-some in Premiere...a friend of mine 10 kilometers away has 180 in her premiere class), we can have more interesting classes. We can do experiments and play games rather than just lecturing. This is an incredibly progressive idea here, as most teachers were taught by copying notes off the board with little explanation or practice, and expect their students to do the same. With all the women on staff this year, the principal is also making Girl's Club mandatory (for female staff members and students), which is an awesome opportunity for girls from the village to get some role models (the number of educated, independent women in their lives is extremely limited).
I was surprised at how often the principal brought me into the conversation (every third sentence seemed to end with “Eh, Rose?” or “N'est-ce pas, Rose?” -- another incentive to pay attention). At first I thought he was teasing me. Then I thought he was just showing off his foreigner to the new staff members. Then I realized that I was actually one of the senior staff members in the room, and one of the only people who was there last year who saw the things he was talking about, and he might actually be calling on me as a professional because he wanted others to hear my opinions and experiences. How strange! (In reality, it was probably some combination of the three...)
Anyways, it was a good start to the school year, and another nice reminder of how much has changed since last year. Not that everything is perfect – last Thursday, for example, immediately after I finished exam review in all my classes (for exams that were supposed to start the coming Monday), I was informed that we would have normal classes instead next week, as the new vice principal had been put in charge of organizing and typing up all the exams, and it turns out he doesn't know how to use a computer...Oh Cameroon.
It's been a funny couple of weeks here...the election was last weekend, so we were told by Peace Corps not to leave our villages, and to pack an emergency bag with ID and a change of clothes and to keep a low profile (which is super easy here when you're white...), etc. Basically I was expecting at any minute to have a motorcycle pull up at my door with a note from Peace Corps telling me to grab what I could carry and get whisked away to Morocco. In reality, I had a quiet Sunday at home with my cat. It's been quite interesting to observe the politics here, and while I'm not sure how much I can really say on the subject right now while I'm still in country, I will say that I am definitely appreciative of being a citizen of a country where you're allowed to say what you think about the political situation and vote in elections that are free and fair. There were a couple of riots down south before the elections, but since then, everything has been quiet here, and is likely to be until the results come in (probably later this month). You never know what will happen, and with all that has gone on in other African countries in the past couple years people are on edge, but the general attitude I get here is that people are dissatisfied but apathetic. A striking example of this came to me a few days ago, when I was sitting with a friend in village who was going on about a certain politician visiting a nearby city “to tell his lies”...meanwhile this same friend was wearing a t-shirt supporting said politician's political party. Anyways, for now, it's business as usual and I'm keeping busy in village teaching and grading and trying to come up with an explanation for my students as to why Americans say “I don't have a pen” rather than “I haven't a pen”, but would say “I haven't been to New York.”
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Easy like drinking water
I just got back last week from another trip to Yaounde, where I worked on the training design for Peace Corps Cameroon's new Youth Development program (the first trainees arrive next week!). After spending the last few months almost completely unscheduled, and the year before that working 7:30-12:30 Monday-Thursday, a full week of working from 8am to 5pm (okay, fine, we had an hour and a half for lunch and were offered “Coffee Break” from 10-10:30, where we guzzled free hot beverages and baked goods in a way that only PCVs can) was definitely a change, and gave me some doubts about my ability to hold down a normal job in America next year. Still, it was nice to be working, particularly on the very beginnings of such a cool program. The health and agroforestry programs were also doing their training design during the same week, but while they had years of information and sessions and plans, the dozen of us working on Youth Development were starting from scratch. We began in July with the goals of the program (“What should a youth development volunteer do?”), and then this month took that and transformed it into “What does a youth development volunteer need to know to be able to do their job well?” ...and then we had to go out and create those resources, along with all of the official Peace Corps documents (which meant spending hours writing “technical competencies” and “session objectives”, arguing over using terms like “cultural custodian” or “community leader”, “family planning” or “contraceptive methods”, among other more technical PC jargon). It was a lot of work, but at the end of it, I think the program is shaping up even better than most people expected.
I left Yaounde with two other English teachers from the Extreme North, all of us having missed the first week of school, none of us knowing our schedules for the coming year, and trying to prepare ourselves to show up on Monday and teach (even though what classes we would be teaching was still a mystery). There had been some kittens hanging around the backyard at the Yaounde volunteer house, and as I've never owned a cat before, naturally I decided to put one in a box, smuggle it on board a train, and take it back up north with me. She was not a fan of the box, or the taxi ride, or the 16 hour train ride, or the eight hour bus ride the next day...or the bush taxi ride after that, or the motorcycle ride that finally got us home, and when I was finally able to let her out of the box, she proceeded to disappear (which is pretty impressive, as my house is not large, and hiding spaces are limited) for such a long time that I was afraid she was gone for good. But a couple hours later she emerged from I still don't know where, and has seemed to recover well from her traumatization since then. We've had a couple arguments since then, mostly over the litter box (she preferred to use the spare mattress), but have generally worked things out. It turns out we have a lot of the same interests, like napping on the couch and sitting in the yard watching the lizards. She takes this second one a bit farther than I do, though, and is actually an excellent hunter. A game shes likes to play involves catching a lizard, bringing it into my bedroom, batting it around for awhile until I think its dead, but not actually killing it, so when I go to remove it, it springs back to life and runs around the house, allowing the kitten to trap it again. Hilarious.
The two of us arrived in village Saturday to find that the power was out. It took until Sunday for me to figure out that the power was not cut all over the village, but once again only in my house. A proper amount of harassing of the bursar (who I share the power line with, and whose teenage son calls himself a technician, but I think it's maybe only because he's really tall and so can reach the wires on the ceiling), and finally a call to an actual technician friend of mine, and power was restored 24 hours later...although this led to a tres villageois argument between the bursar and my technician friend over whether or not my cables needed to be replaced. The bursar came to my house that night, angrily claiming that the technician was lying and just wanted to make money off me (which is believable, except that he didn't charge me anything even though he spent the whole afternoon fixing cables and taking apart and putting back together all of my various appliances that had stopped working). I told him I didn't really see what the problem was, as long as the power was working (which it was). This whole situation was also another opportunity for the deficiency of my french to be revealed. The technician spent the afternoon screwing and unscrewing things, and asking questions like “Do you have a b;ldfsakd?”, to which I would respond, “A what?” He would repeat, I would continue to not understand, and he would sigh and go fetch it himself, or give up. Then I would ask questions like “What was wrong with my fan?” and he would respond, “The sdlfa'dkjfljhu was broken,” to which I would respond, “The what?” and so on and so on.
Monday morning, I showed up at school, received my schedule from our new vice-principal (who was sent to the village this year along with our new discipline master, meaning that, as my principal said “we are like a real school now”), and jumped right into teaching. I have the four oldest classes this year, and two of those classes are the same students as I had last year – it was incredibly wonderful to walk into the room and recognize so many faces. I spent the first day doing introductions and talking about why we are all here. My new classes were shocked when I made everyone stand up and say their name and what they had done this summer (“What? We have to talk in English class?”), and my older kids laughed when I explained to them that it wasn't sorcery that helped them pass their exams, but actually doing the work, studying, asking questions, etc.
My terminales – the seniors – are a combination of my small terminale class last year (who I knew really well, because there were only 13 of them) and about half of last year's premieres, who passed their exams (this is a super high pass rate, especially for the village), and who were my absolute favorites last year. So basically I have this all-star class of about 25 super smart, motivated, funny students who actually speak pretty good English (I was explaining something to them in French this week and someone called out sarcastically – in French – “We get it Madame”; when I asked them if a verb tense review exercise was difficult, one of them said “It's easy like drinking water!”), ask tons of questions, call me out on my mistakes, and are a ton of fun. They love to discuss things (rare for students here, who are taught to sit quietly and copy off the board) and ask lots of questions about America, which I always love to talk about (I think it's because they are actually interested, but then I remember those teachers I had who could be easily distracted into not teaching you anything if you brought up their favorite topic, and I wonder if I haven't become one of them...).
My premieres – the juniors – are the same students from my seconde class last year, who were a workout. They love to talk through the whole lesson and not pay attention, then get mad at the end when they don't understand anything. I'm hoping the prospect of taking a national exam at the end of the year will make them a bit more serious as time passes. I was nervous about my two new classes, especially as last year's secondes had been such a challenge...but they are so far pretty terrific. The new secondes are fresh off their success on the B.E.P.C. (a national exam they had to pass at the beginning of the summer to get into seconde), serious and smart. The troisiemes (freshman) are nombreux (about 130 on the roll right now, maybe 80 in the class so far), but eager to learn, and I've found that as long as I go slow and use French when needed we get along pretty well. There are a lot of SUPER smart kids in that class, too, and it's always great to have the chance to work with new motivated students. It's fun, too, with the new classes to see the nasara shock and awe factor again – my old ones have gotten used to me and my teaching style (which tends to be pretty different from their other teachers), but for the new ones, I am full of surprises, and I can tell they are still paying attention just because they have no idea what ridiculous thing the white lady is going to do next.
So, we are only a week in, but I am thrilled to be back teaching again, and really looking forward to this year. I guess it doesn't seem this way to you all in America, but for me and my stagemates, it is starting to set in that this will all be over sooner rather than later. We've begun nostalgically saying things like “Aww, our last first day of school!” which I'm sure will deteriorate later this year into “Aww, the last time I get pickpocketed!”, or “Aww, it's my last case of amoebas!” Maybe my happiness with this last first week of school has something to do with my ability to look back on last year's first first week of school and be able to see how far I (and my students) have come. I'm sure I will probably feel differently at times later this year when students cheat or lose interest or it's so hot in my house that my candles literally melt or the power gets cut yet again, but for now I am feeling happy and optimistic, and wonder how I lucked into having such an awesome job.
I left Yaounde with two other English teachers from the Extreme North, all of us having missed the first week of school, none of us knowing our schedules for the coming year, and trying to prepare ourselves to show up on Monday and teach (even though what classes we would be teaching was still a mystery). There had been some kittens hanging around the backyard at the Yaounde volunteer house, and as I've never owned a cat before, naturally I decided to put one in a box, smuggle it on board a train, and take it back up north with me. She was not a fan of the box, or the taxi ride, or the 16 hour train ride, or the eight hour bus ride the next day...or the bush taxi ride after that, or the motorcycle ride that finally got us home, and when I was finally able to let her out of the box, she proceeded to disappear (which is pretty impressive, as my house is not large, and hiding spaces are limited) for such a long time that I was afraid she was gone for good. But a couple hours later she emerged from I still don't know where, and has seemed to recover well from her traumatization since then. We've had a couple arguments since then, mostly over the litter box (she preferred to use the spare mattress), but have generally worked things out. It turns out we have a lot of the same interests, like napping on the couch and sitting in the yard watching the lizards. She takes this second one a bit farther than I do, though, and is actually an excellent hunter. A game shes likes to play involves catching a lizard, bringing it into my bedroom, batting it around for awhile until I think its dead, but not actually killing it, so when I go to remove it, it springs back to life and runs around the house, allowing the kitten to trap it again. Hilarious.
The two of us arrived in village Saturday to find that the power was out. It took until Sunday for me to figure out that the power was not cut all over the village, but once again only in my house. A proper amount of harassing of the bursar (who I share the power line with, and whose teenage son calls himself a technician, but I think it's maybe only because he's really tall and so can reach the wires on the ceiling), and finally a call to an actual technician friend of mine, and power was restored 24 hours later...although this led to a tres villageois argument between the bursar and my technician friend over whether or not my cables needed to be replaced. The bursar came to my house that night, angrily claiming that the technician was lying and just wanted to make money off me (which is believable, except that he didn't charge me anything even though he spent the whole afternoon fixing cables and taking apart and putting back together all of my various appliances that had stopped working). I told him I didn't really see what the problem was, as long as the power was working (which it was). This whole situation was also another opportunity for the deficiency of my french to be revealed. The technician spent the afternoon screwing and unscrewing things, and asking questions like “Do you have a b;ldfsakd?”, to which I would respond, “A what?” He would repeat, I would continue to not understand, and he would sigh and go fetch it himself, or give up. Then I would ask questions like “What was wrong with my fan?” and he would respond, “The sdlfa'dkjfljhu was broken,” to which I would respond, “The what?” and so on and so on.
Monday morning, I showed up at school, received my schedule from our new vice-principal (who was sent to the village this year along with our new discipline master, meaning that, as my principal said “we are like a real school now”), and jumped right into teaching. I have the four oldest classes this year, and two of those classes are the same students as I had last year – it was incredibly wonderful to walk into the room and recognize so many faces. I spent the first day doing introductions and talking about why we are all here. My new classes were shocked when I made everyone stand up and say their name and what they had done this summer (“What? We have to talk in English class?”), and my older kids laughed when I explained to them that it wasn't sorcery that helped them pass their exams, but actually doing the work, studying, asking questions, etc.
My terminales – the seniors – are a combination of my small terminale class last year (who I knew really well, because there were only 13 of them) and about half of last year's premieres, who passed their exams (this is a super high pass rate, especially for the village), and who were my absolute favorites last year. So basically I have this all-star class of about 25 super smart, motivated, funny students who actually speak pretty good English (I was explaining something to them in French this week and someone called out sarcastically – in French – “We get it Madame”; when I asked them if a verb tense review exercise was difficult, one of them said “It's easy like drinking water!”), ask tons of questions, call me out on my mistakes, and are a ton of fun. They love to discuss things (rare for students here, who are taught to sit quietly and copy off the board) and ask lots of questions about America, which I always love to talk about (I think it's because they are actually interested, but then I remember those teachers I had who could be easily distracted into not teaching you anything if you brought up their favorite topic, and I wonder if I haven't become one of them...).
My premieres – the juniors – are the same students from my seconde class last year, who were a workout. They love to talk through the whole lesson and not pay attention, then get mad at the end when they don't understand anything. I'm hoping the prospect of taking a national exam at the end of the year will make them a bit more serious as time passes. I was nervous about my two new classes, especially as last year's secondes had been such a challenge...but they are so far pretty terrific. The new secondes are fresh off their success on the B.E.P.C. (a national exam they had to pass at the beginning of the summer to get into seconde), serious and smart. The troisiemes (freshman) are nombreux (about 130 on the roll right now, maybe 80 in the class so far), but eager to learn, and I've found that as long as I go slow and use French when needed we get along pretty well. There are a lot of SUPER smart kids in that class, too, and it's always great to have the chance to work with new motivated students. It's fun, too, with the new classes to see the nasara shock and awe factor again – my old ones have gotten used to me and my teaching style (which tends to be pretty different from their other teachers), but for the new ones, I am full of surprises, and I can tell they are still paying attention just because they have no idea what ridiculous thing the white lady is going to do next.
So, we are only a week in, but I am thrilled to be back teaching again, and really looking forward to this year. I guess it doesn't seem this way to you all in America, but for me and my stagemates, it is starting to set in that this will all be over sooner rather than later. We've begun nostalgically saying things like “Aww, our last first day of school!” which I'm sure will deteriorate later this year into “Aww, the last time I get pickpocketed!”, or “Aww, it's my last case of amoebas!” Maybe my happiness with this last first week of school has something to do with my ability to look back on last year's first first week of school and be able to see how far I (and my students) have come. I'm sure I will probably feel differently at times later this year when students cheat or lose interest or it's so hot in my house that my candles literally melt or the power gets cut yet again, but for now I am feeling happy and optimistic, and wonder how I lucked into having such an awesome job.
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