Busy, Busy

Well, I was looking forward to the "thanksgiving" break this past weekend, but it kinda of ended up being a whirlwind of activity as usual, when you have so many people around, and you want to hang out with all of them, and you are trying to fit in work with some relaxing time. I had classes Thursday up till the afternoon at the college, and jammed back home on my bike, to grab my bag, then caught a gelley to Fajara. I walked in the PC office and was immediately (literally like 5 feet in the door) thrown into practice for the 40th anniversary celebration. We were supposed to say a few snippets about where we are posted and what we are working on. After that we caught a ride to a peace corps staff house and had a great time, eating roasted pumpkin seeds, watching and trying no to get in the way of people who made the tremendous effort of making about 24 from scratch pumpkin pies. Amazing. Andy enjoyed barbecuing a ton of chicken with the people out back. It was a general good time. After all the food was finished, we took it over to the Embassy house and had a really great dinner. It was very surreal, after we stuffed ourselves, we hung out on the grass area out back of the house and watched the sun set against a picturesque view of palm trees and the beach. And even though I thought I might be in danger of sinking because of my full belly, we took a dip in the pool. After they kicked us out of there, we went to a house near the tourist area that we were fortunate enough to be staying. We enjoyed a nice warm shower, toilets that flush and you can sit on, nice people and a comfortable bed. But even though we enjoyed all this, there was always a strange feeling that I just wanted to go home to Brikama. Maybe because we are so comfortable there, and we don't really need those amenities anymore. After a great weekend of eating, hanging out on the beach, and sitting through meetings, we headed back home on Sunday. We were really glad to be back, and it was just a few days that we were gone!
So, I am trying to slow down a bit with work, the end of the college term is very near, this week we are reviewing in the classes, and then next week is their final test. The following week after that I have to turn in grades,..(groannn.....) Which means a lot of work figuring out grades for about 350 students by hand. The nursery school is coming along, I am working right now on getting a resource binder together for them, so we can start to build up the resources the teachers have available to them. I came to the peace corps office to print out examples of themed units and other helpful information to add to the binder. Hopefully, I will get the other teachers to contribute their own ideas to the binder, and soon we will have many binders. Thats the goal right?
I have been really trying to make a concerted effort to help out host brothers and sisters with school type work, because we are learning every time they come for homework help, that instead of the Venn diagram assignment they have to do, they really should just be learning how to read! So, instead of doing a lot of the things I was doing for myself, like drawing, and reading, I have been nonstop teaching it seems. Take yesterday, I had three, two-hours classes, drawn out between the hours of 9am and 6:30pm at the college, right when I got home, and sat out on the porch and two of the smaller children came, so I took out my homemade flashcards and bottle caps for counters, and started doing work with them. After they were done with that, one of my host sisters came over with her SES book, where it was talking about the importance of the River Gambia, and I said, "you read it, and any word that you can figure out, I will help you", turns out that was every single word. She can't read. So, I insisted that the next day we would start work on learning how to read, but for that moment, I read it to her, and we summarized it, talked about what it said, and I asked her some questions about what it had talked about. Well, if that wasn't enough teaching for one day, when I though I was done for the day, and we had eaten dinner and taken a shower, I once again came out onto the porch, only to end up doing place value homework with our host brother till about 10:45. The funny thing was that he came to Andy for help, and Andy didn't really know how to help him, so I took over, and I really think that he was getting the hang of it by the end of the exercise. I felt very accomplished last night, and the great thing is, that as much work as that was, I would do it all day because I really am finding out being here in the Gambia how much I really enjoy my chosen career. And because it's Thanksgiving time, I want to say how much I am thankful for the chance to be able to teach here and broaden my horizons by teaching older students, when I thought I would never like to go above grade 1! I'm also thankful that I get to work within such interesting cultural surrounding, and with so many people. Anyhow, enough of that!~ I think that Andy gave a more detailed account (of course!) about our weekend break, so be sure to click on that link on the right hand side of my blog.
Well, I think thats all my brain can handle right now, I am here in Fajara, doing work, and taking this chance on the computer to update you guys. Of course like every trip here, I have to hit up the grocery store and lumber down to the car park with my arms full to run and catch a gelley back home. Ok, well, call me, write me, email me!