Yep thats right. 2 army men rode in my taxi brousse for about 30 minutes and they were fully equipped with the weaponry. on the plus side, no one messed with us, but no one had been messing with us so really its a moot point. kathy, another PCV with me, hearts skipped a beat but she later recovered. and that was my morning. on to other news...
I have been at site now for basically month and I am still not fully used to everything. I am still getting into the routine of early mornings and early evenings, bargaining for food, not going outside after its dark and peeing in a hole (which, when your kabone [bathroom in Malagasy] hole is as small as mine, presents some difficulty in the aiming department), though it is nice to be able to go to the bathroom in my kabone at night, since mines close by, as in its in my backyard.
My house is slowly starting to come together. I have a couch and a love seat, though they are not American sized. People are smaller here so my couch and love seat are smaller. I have to get cushions/foam for them, so they are comfy to sit on, but they aren’t too bad right now. I have 3 tables, one I use as a table, one as a desk and one to put all my dishes etc on. I have a nifty cooking stand, with shelves underneath for food, which I love. It’s the perfect height for me and makes life so much easier. I have a bed (duh) and shelves built into the wall for my clothes. I have an indoor ladosy (shower), which now has a shower curtain up. Yay! The carpenter had to come and make a frame to hold the curtain but it was worth it (the carpenter was a hassle though. He was a week and a half late on the shower, couch and sofa. Good thing it wasn’t essential). I also have 4 chairs and 2 paintings. Plus a partridge in a pear tree. Syke! My house is big, nice, has electricity and I love it. It will be just fine for the next 2 years.
The outside of my house with my new fence
The front room of my house
The front room of my house
my bedroom/second room
I have become quite a cook since I’ve been here (pretty much because I’ve had to or starve) and I really enjoy cooking. I have made pancakes, English muffins, spaghetti (I made the sauce from scratch too. Im the next Guy Fieri), home fries, scrambled eggs, fried rice, mac and cheese, “reeses” peanut butter balls, tuna burgers, fries, pounded my own peanut butter and coffee, and have made multiple times a delicious banana/pineapple fruit salad. I am going to buy enough ingredients to make more dessert things, like fudge, oatmeal, no bake cookies and lots of other stuff. PC gave us a cookbook which is how I know how to make all this stuff, though the spaghetti sauce was created with the cookbook and trial and error. Brian and I will not be lacking in the food department when we finally live together, since he’s learning how to make different foods too. I haven’t tried anything that an oven, cause I don’t have one, nor have I tried anything with a long ingredient list, but that will come. I do know that I will never not make pancakes from scratch again. They are just too good when you make them yourself. Plus, I love adding a splash of vanilla to them. Makes them even more nummy! Also fun fact I now like yogurt. In fact I have a yogurt lady! I go to her pretty much every day, cause then I don’t have to worry out not getting my calcium. If anyone knows of any good recipes that you make in a frying pan and that’s easy send them my way!
So from the time I got to site (which was September 23rd, though my first full day alone wasn’t until sept 26th) till October 18th I had nothing to do but cook and read and watch movies and take 2 hour walks (yep that’s right. I literally had nothing to do/was so bored that I voluntarily took 2 hour walks, which happened about 5 times a week. And the real crazy part is that I want to continue to take 2 hour or longer walks once school starts cause it’s the only way I get exercise. Plus I eat a lot of peanut butter and nutella and I have to work that off somehow). I have made it through 2 seasons of Friends, countless movies, and have explored all the major roads leading in and out of town. I have found some beautiful views and I lost my watch, which is a bummer, but my mom is going to send me a new one. Kathy and I hung out a lot, going back and forth between our sites and my site mate showed up a week after I got there. Its been going pretty well, better than I expected. Its nice to have someone to speak English with and to share the stares. Though some days I just like being by myself. I have read quite a few books since I last posted and here they are…
The Wild Things
Bacchus and Me
The #1 Ladies Detective Agency, book 1
Mountains Beyond Mountains
Chuck Klosterman IV (which I forgot to put on my list last time)
The Last Templar
Cutting for Stone
Sh*t My Dad Says
The Immortal Life of Henreitta Lacks
Bite Me: A Love Story
School was supposed to start on Oct 11th, or so I thought, but no, I was wrong. Well it did sorta start on the 11th, but more on that in a second. I am teaching mostly 6eme, 3 classes worth, on Mon, Tues and Thurs from 1:30-5:30, but I am also teaching a class of 2nde (which is 10th grade) Mon 9-11 and Wed 7-8 (also fun story. They originally told me that I was teaching 4 classes of 6eme, which is why I am only teaching one class of 2nde. I only found out there was 3 classes of 6eme, not 4, when I went to find out where the 4th 6eme class met and they told me that there wasn’t a 4th class of 6eme. Needless to say I was really confused for about 5min then was like oh well. I do feel a wee bit bad, since I know that the lycee wanted me to teach another class of 2nde, which I couldn’t do when I thought I had 4 classes of 6eme. Now its too late, since school already stared). I had to go to the CEG (the middle school) at 7:30am on Monday the 11th, for what I wasn’t sure. I showed up and was stared at by all the kids. That was to be expected though. I could not tell you for the life of me what happened for the first 2 hours I was there. The kids eventually started to move around, out of there lines, and around 8:45 these 3 girls came over to talk to me and ask me questions. They were 3eme students, so they knew a little English. They would ask me questions in English and I would answer in Malagasy. Well, their coming over to talk to me was the straw that broke the camels back. All of a sudden, a stampede of kids rushed over to where I was standing, not to talk to me, but to stare at me. For an hour this went on, with them staring and me smiling uncomfortably, with the occasional brave soul piping up to ask me the same set of questions: whats your name, where are you from, do you have any brothers, how old are you. Yada yada yada. None of the teachers came to rescue me, even though they were standing 10 feet from me. Finally, at 9:45am, all the teachers got called into a teachers meeting so I got to make my escape. Then, for the next 90min, I once again had no idea what was going on, since it was all in Malagasy. I introduced myself then whoosh, incomprehension.
I had to go to the high school, the Lycee, on the 12th, which went a wee bit better. I actually talked to the teachers more, and one guy, Mister Eddy, spoke very good English, which was a plus. I had to introduce myself again and then the teachers talked for awhile, then all of a sudden, there was a rush for the blackboard. I sat there, trying to figure it out and finally it hit me; they were making the schedule for the year. My principle did mine so I just sat there for 90min, writing a letter to Brian/staring out the window. My lycee is a 40min walk from my house, so I get my exercise every time I go. Yah
On the 14th I had to go back to the CEG for I had no idea (it was nice that I got my b-day off, which wasn’t planned. Thanks for all the b-day wishes everyone!). I was there from 7:30-11:30 and did 2 things for a grand total of 20 mins. That’s it. I introduced myself to one class of 6eme and watched while they elected a head student then had about a ten minute teacher meeting about something. I did talk to more teachers, which was cool. And later that afternoon another English teacher from a private school came by and asked if I could speak English with her. Now so far I have had 4 people, including her, ask me to tutor/speak English with them and I turned down all of them but the teacher. The other 3 were students and I told them that I wasn’t allowed to do anything besides teach my classes for the first 3 months (which is true, though there is some flexibility in that, but I didn’t feel like using it with the 3 students. 2 came and talked to me while I was washing my clothes. Not the best time to ask me for help). I said yes to the teacher cause she’s a) a fellow English teacher b) she already speaks good English and c) she was nice and accommodating when I said I didn’t want to start till November. We shall see how that goes.
So I finally made it through the first week and was ready to start teaching. My first class was the 2nde students and I was just giving them an assessment the first week, to see where they were at. So I took attendance, read my classroom rules and went straight into the assessment. When I saw them again on Wednesday they still had 3 more exercises to do and once class ended I collected all their copybooks and brought them home with me so I could look them over. There were definitely exercises that few people did (even though all my exercises came from the curriculum guide for troiseme, the grade before and one girl wrote on the first page of her copybook that she doesn’t like speaking English and wants to just speak Malagasy. What I thought was interesting about that is she didn’t do half bad on the assessment. I have a lot to go over with them next week, but that’s ok. Almost no one got the advice exercise I gave so good thing there is unit on advice this year. The kids seem like they will be fine. The CEG is a different story, however.
So I get there on Monday at 1:30 ready to go. I had a lesson all planned out (hi, how are you, goodbye etc) and I was curious to see how these students would be compared to the 2nde kids. Well apparently the schedule wasn’t set yet so for the first 30-40 minutes the teachers had to create the schedule (even though they had already given me my schedule the week and a half before, no one else got theirs. Apparently). Anyway then they tell me that this first week of school I wasn’t supposed to teach, just introduce the class and myself. Well that does not take up 2 hours so I sorta started to panic. So I introduced myself, went around and made each person introduce themselves (for the 2nd and 3rd class I taught they also had to tell me how many siblings they have and how old they are. I have quite the range of ages. I have anywhere from 10yr olds to a 17ys old. I know. Crazy!). I read the classroom rules in my limited Malagasy and then I taught them the ABC’s cause I couldn’t think of anything else to do. They have a hard time with H-K. not sure why, but that section really trips them up. After that, I went over the difference between good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. I still had time left so I played a game with them. I asked them yes or no questions and if their answers were yes, then they raised their hands. Some kids raised their hands every time but oh well. That kept them occupied (for my 2nd and 3rd class I ended up letting them out an hour early, though in my defense I only did that cause other teachers were doing it too). I have a joker in one of my classes and he’s the head student (at the 6eme level its an elected position. Afterwards, it’s the top student, grade-wise, how is the head student). He is going to be a pain in my butt I can already tell. He kept yelling the words I asked them to repeat and making jokes on the sly. I have already had to tell him multiple times to stop doing something. Oi vey. I am going to have to be really stern in that class since any wiggle room there it this kid will take it. He is ruining it for everyone.
So my CEG still doesn’t have a schedule. I found that out yesterday when I was supposed to show up for what I thought was my first day of teaching (even though they had told me not to teach the first week what else was I supposed to do with them for an hour?) and they said it was ok if I didn’t come. I think they were going to clean the school, which I thought happened last week, since most of the students were carrying branches of leaves. Basically I am still real confused when it comes to the CEG, but I will show up on Monday at the time I think I’m supposed to and that will have to do.
So thank you to everyone who has sent me letters and packages and facebook messages. I really appreciate it. And just to repeat, my new address is Megan Van Aelstyn, BP 26, 114 Faratsiho, Madagascar. Write to me everyone! I LOVE mail and I haven’t gotten any at my new site yet. Miss everyone and hugs and kisses to all!!!!!
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