Dysentery? Check. Malaria? Check. Giardia? Check. Scarlet fever? Check. Crazy animal/insect bites? Check. Daily struggle to find and clean water? Check. Not showering as often as you would like, since it’s out of a bucket and freezing? Check. The same food over and over again? Check. The only thing the Oregon Trail has over MAD is I haven’t had to circle my wagon and defend against a Native American attack, though the equivalent, taxi brousse robbery at night, could very much happen. Not that I’m expecting it to anytime soon since we aren’t allowed to ride taxi brousses at night. Man I wish I had that computer game. If anyone has a copy that would work on Windows 7 I would love to have it. Also Rollercoaster Tycoon. Two great games.
(this blog could have had a lot of different titles. It has been an eventful 3 weeks. The alternate titles? I shot the moon! (first time I have ever done that. It was so exciting! And in my first hand of the game. I have tried a few times to do it but always missed a heart or two. This time I didn’t even try and voila! Ps. This is in regards to Hearts) or Wankle strikes again! (I stepped on a rock funny. I am totally fine. Ankle swelled a little but lets be real it’s always a little swollen. I need Hanna and her ace bandage skills! Takes me back to AXO’s formal when Hanna had to wrap my ankle. Good times).
So one last little recap of Fianar. It was great! Amber and I got a lot done re-writing the 2nde guide, so it was a good trip. The next weekend was our VAC meeting which was great because Shayla, my friend who is way far away yet still part of my VAC region, actually got to come to VAC. I hadn’t seen her in 6 months so I was excited. This VAC was also fun cause we have 7 new people in our region from the March group that just finished training. They seemed cool. None of them are close to me so I don’t know if I will see them a lot outside of VAC, but its good to have more people in our region. And I think we are going to get more people after the July group finishes too. We went to a new restaurant in Antsirabe that I have seen and known about but never been to. It was good. We all went out Saturday night to the only club in Antsirabe. I use that term very lightly. It was fine. I am not a fan of drunk Malagasy’s. Most are not fun, keep to themselves drunk, at least around Vazaha’s. They tend to get rowdy and fight more than I remember drunk American’s doing and it just gets uncomfortable. It was good to hang out but I wasn’t feeling too good so I left earlier than everyone. Turns out the reason I wasn’t feeling good was that I had strep. My friend Brianna got strep AND scarlet fever. Glad I escaped the scarlet fever, though I have a sneaky suspicion that I gave her the strep. Sorry Brianna!
Faratsiho is fine. I am officially done with school! I turned in my grades for the lycee and all I have left to do is give the CEG my grades for my 6eme kids. Its exciting to be done. I have accomplished something! And though my kids don’t care, I do have a few that do and I can tell they have learned something. One girl essentially got me through the school year. She never got below a B average on any test and most of the time had the highest test grade in the class. She even got a perfect score on the last exam. I was so proud of her! It made me feel so good that someone was listening. It was exciting to have someone actually study and pay attention and learn the material. There were a few others, including the woman I tutors sister, who did pretty well and didn’t fail everything. My 2ndes were better, grade-wise, but there was still one very quiet guy who did the best who got me through the semester. He was just like the girl in my 6eme classes. I hope things stuck. I did find out that the 2nde class I teach is the bad class, the class with the worst grades overall out of all the 2nde classes (there’s 4). Once I found that out, which was sometime this trimester, it all made sense. Of course I taught the bad class. That’s my karma.
I am getting all the final reservations for my parents trip. Doing a lot of errands for it the rest of this week. I am excited that they are coming. It will be interesting to see how they like MAD and how they get along here. And exciting news BRIAN GOT HIS TICKET TOO! We are going to go to Ile St Marie. I am not sure exactly what his ticket deal is, since he texted me 12 hours ago about it and hes been at a wedding but I will find out. YAY!!!! I am so excited!!!!
One year down, one to go. That’s not really true, in terms of actually time, but that’s what it feels like since teaching is my primary assignment. I only have one more year of teaching left. I won’t know what I’m teaching next year til the end of September or beginning of October but I want to work primarily at the lycee, since this year I did mostly the CEG. Trying to make it fair. I am movin and groovin!
Book list:
The Bitch
Unaccustomed Earth
The Wedding
Let the Great World Spin
The Scent of Rain and Lightning
The Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
