Saturday, May 5, 2012

What's going on in the Daily Life??

Oh dear. Last time I updated it was January.  It's now May. My bad, really, my b.  I can't say I didn't warn you though, right?  As I spend more time living in Rwanda, the less I feel like exciting things happen to me and more just "normal" every day stuff is happening.  And sorry, I'm not really one to write an entire blog about the mundane daily activities.  But, it IS indeed time for a long and much needed blog update because, well, it's been 5 months and stuff HAS happened!

So, here goes.  Back in January, the second school year started.  As usual, it got off to a slow start (no surprise there).  However, all of us teachers buckled down and made the weekly schedule giving me 3.5 day weekends (worth it).  At that point, I was teaching 5 classes of S2 Biology (8th grade).  Little did I know that a month, yes, a month before the trimester officially ended we would be switching everything up again.  Alas, about 2/3 of the way through the first trimester my headmaster calls a staff meeting and, guess what we do.  We redo the entire.schedule. TWICE. Not only that, we have to switch around who's teaching what because we're short some teachers, yada yada, every Rwandan teacher needs to be teaching 30hrs no more no less, yada yada.Then this convo happens:

HM: Caroline can you teach more than 15 hrs??
C: Nope, no I cannot. 
HM: Why?
C:My work doesn't let me. 
HM: Can you teach English? 
C:Do I have to? 
HM: Please?? It's your native tongue, it will be so easy for you.
C: I really don't want to, do I have to?
HM: Yes, you will teach S4 EFK, Literature in English.  7 hours a week. And only 3 classes of S2 Biology.
C: I'll only teach English Literature if you give me a Sport class and only 2 classes of Biology.
HM: Okay.

So, with 2 weeks left of teaching in the 1st trimester, I went from teaching 5 classes of S2 Biology to teaching 1 class of English Literature (7hrs a week), 1 class of sport (2 hrs a week) and 2 classes of biology (3 hrs each a week).  Worst part was breaking the news to my biology students I'd be leaving with another teacher...some of the started crying but alas, not much I could do and I'll be honest, I was pretty damn stoked to be teaching sport!!!

I'm still stoked about teaching sport, it gives me an excuse to go to school in gym clothes, how much better can you get??

I digress, so yeah that was the first trimester in a nutshell. Then we did exams way to early (per usual), my kids did..ehhhh, they at least tried hard.  And then it was HOLIDAY BREAK!! Wa-hoo!

What'd I do during my last first trimester break of Peace Corps? Well, I'm so glad you asked.  I received an absolutely wonderful and fabulous visit from my Aunt Linda! And we did all sorts of stuff like Gorilla Trekking (it rained hard), Chimpanzee trekking, Colubus monkey trekking (it rained hard again), Canopy walking, chilling at Caroline's village, visiting Caroline's host family, hanging in Kigali and being spoiled at the Nyungwe Forest Lodge in Nyungwe National Rain Forest.  Talk about a good time.  Next blog post, that whole visit in pictures, I promise.  I'm just to lazy to write about it here because I know pictures are better.

Anywho, Linda was here in Rwanda for a week and a half and it was great, absolutely wonderful having her here.  We had a great time and I was pretty bummed to send her back to America, though I know Uncle Pietro was probably happy to get her back. After sending Linda on her way, it was a pretty quiet rest of the holiday.  I had some things to get done, so I was in Kigali a couple days but otherwise I tried to spend the rest of it in my village.  Because I leave them soon, and yes, 6 months is soon, it's really really soon!

Fast forward a little bit to April 23rd annnnnnd, it's the beginning of the 2nd trimester!  Again, we get off to a slow start.  We've finished the first 2 weeks and I've taught maybe like 5 lessons.  Goooooooo Rwanda!  Upside though, I've been corresponding with my World Wise School matchup.  This a partnership between Peace Corps and American schools to essentially do a pen pal type thing.  At the beginning of break, I received some letters from the class I'm connected with.  And finally, this last week, my EFK (English, French, Kinyarwanda Language Option) students were able to draft and write their response letters.  Talk about excited. I have never seen those kids work so darn hard.  They wrote draft after draft and really tried to use their heads to be creative (which is often a challenge here).  They put in about 9 hrs of class time to write, and rewrite, and rewrite their letters.  I was very happy with their final drafts which got sent out yesterday and are on their was to America!  Very proud teacher right here, they sure rocked it.

Then this weekend I'm in Kigali teaching for the Judges program.  That was fun and now I'm just working on organizing my life and updating things that are severely outdated (like this blog)!  And as soon as this one posts, I'll begin working on a post to detail Linda's visit to Rwanda, complete with pictures!

Keepin it real, Rwanda style!