Hip Hip Hooray!

It's Saturday!
Well, I have officially finished my grades, printed them out to turn in (even though the few zeros in each class mar the finished product). Andy and I are here at the peace corps office for my end of term "celebration". (A beer and something we call pizza, but believe me it's no papa johns or dominoes, it's some lebenaese person making a good effort!--small aside--one time I got it, and was surprised they offered "sausage" and it turns out what was presented to us was pizza with hot dogs cut up on it.. not exactly gourmet... hehe One we ordered in Senegal had a big fried egg in the middle of it... strange variations, I wonder if that will be the next papa johns gimmick!?)
Some of the new pictures Andy put recently are of my observation trek the other week. Not too many, because I didn't want to get mobbed by a ton of school kids. But there is one of a little girl pointing with a pointer to a blackboard set on the ground. This was just a sad/funny situation, because there were about forty little tiny kids (about 5/6 years old) crammed in this little low ceiling concrete building, and they were chanting what the little girl was pointing at after her,.. with no teacher around.... and I just thought.... ya know, she is doing just as good, or better of a job as any grown up teacher with training does here a lot of the times.... point to crap on a board and having the kids chant in a sing song manner. At the same school, I went around to look at this library, (noticed it, because it was a nicely painted) thinking it looked pretty nice from the outside, and when I went in, I had that emotional pull again to cry/laugh at the same time, because there were a ton of great books, some of which were on the dusty shelves, but there were a ton of these good new books sprawled out on the floor in the middle of the library, with inches of dirt on them, like they had been there for a long time. Sometimes you just want to yell at people to stop sending money and crap, because they don't know how to take care of it, or use it here... but then again how will they learn.... but also they won't respect it as much unless they've earned it! sorry, these are an example of the back and forth thoughts that go through my mind all the time here.
Another thing that I noticed by visiting a lot of schools last week, was that at any given school, in the headmasters office there must be: 1. a blow up globe, or ball of some sort [not being used by children it was meant for, but for decorating the headmasters office] 2. a giant map of some either obscure or random place [heavely favored is a map of the place that has given money, like the UK, or the netherlands] 3. Random health/social posters made here in the Gambia For example, that show a picture of an older man with devils horns giving a little girl candy,.. and saying, "He is not your daddy, and what he has is not sweet!" (the message is clearly, no sugar-daddies please!).
Well, I think we are going to get a move on, Hope you are having a good Saturday.
Talk to you all soon. I hope!