Death of a Laptop

My laptop is dying. The fan doesn't work. The power jack appears to be short circuiting all the power adapters that plug into it. I think the motherboard is short circuiting by the power jack. Help. Dell Latitude why are you failing me now?

Squash the Rumors

Well, since I haven't officially made the announcement yet, I might as well...

I am doing a third year! I am staying at my current site, and continuing to teach mathematics, and hopefully other subjects next year. Secondary projects in the works are:

• Making an awesome website which will the tell the world more about Peace Corps Burkina Faso and also enhance the PCV experience by making collaborative resources available;
• Building a school library to better French literacy, and thus, French grades, and indirectly all other school subject grades.

The end of the school year wrapped up well. My sixième (sixth grade) students finally started to understand my teaching style, and did really well this trimester on tests including tough topics such as relative numbers (positive and negative numbers), plotting points on a graph, ratios and orthogonal symetry in a plane. So, I felt really accomplished! The only down side is everyone thought that I had lowered the level of my tests, even though I hadn't (in this class)!!! They didn't seem to understand that the students really stepped it up a notch.

The other math teacher and I also had an Olympiad for our top students in each class to see who the best of the best were. The Olympiad was really challenging, but some of the kids did okay. It's my latest FB profile pic.

I am doing some summer school work with interested students... which isn't a lot right now, but I'm hoping the word will spread, and that others will jump on the bandwagon. The kids who are interested are super bright and motivated, so I am inspired!!!! :D

So, I got selected to be a trainer for the incoming Stage, which is an exciting opportunity to meet new volunteers and also my future neighbors. I will be getting three within a 50 km radius of my village, if all goes well. Also, I get to work and do one of my favorite things: Teaching. Yes, as much as I get frustrated with my indisciplined students and correcting tests in bad lighting, I love teaching.

It's been just darned hot these past few months, but the good news is the rainy sseason started early (compared to the last two years). So things are already green and it's only the beginning of June.

Other exciting news... because you all know how much I love to use certain types of punctuation!!! I will be back in America in July. So, clear your calendar folks because trouble is coming to town.

Well, that's all I got for now... I will hammer out flight details soon, so you all can be ready. :)

Best and love,

AK

http://wapedia.mobi/en/Yaba_Department

The Tao of Pooh

So, I spent/am spending this "Spring Break" in the hot hot heat of... Bagre, Beguedo and Ouaga. I am on the final leg of this trip. In visiting Liz and An, I got to see amazing things like delicious food, electrified villages bigger than the "cities" by me, rice paddies, fish farming, GliderPro on a Mac, gigantic pigs that were propre and Taiwanese people.

All in all, it's been REALLY HOT, but I've been eating well and relaxing and thus, able to perform important functions for my COS/extension tests. BF RPCVs you know what I am talking about.

Here's me and Liz hanging out in some rice fields. Ignore the date, my camera is on crack and refuses to register the AA batteries half the time and resets the date randomly. I will try to post more pics later as I will be in town for most of the rest of the week doing some work .

40 km WNW of the Bush

Hi, I am alive and typing in Tougan. What has been going on? Mostly teaching or scolding, I don't feel like there is a big difference between the two. I guess I have mentioned that I am teaching twice as much this year as opposed to last year. I am twice as tired and much less dynamic or friendly as is usual with me.

My service is winding down. I am considering applying for a third year, and despite my interest in doing so/desire of colleagues/needs of the village, I might not. We will see. There are certain factors weighing against a third year (people I love very much!)

PCBF just got a new IT committee going and I have the chance to contribute to it. Unfortunately, I'm technically not around for much longer (unless of course I apply and get accepted for that mystical third year) so I hope to push it far enough so that we can go live with a beta-version of a publicly-accessible website in August keeping all you interested parents, friends, prospective volunteers, and Burkinabè-loving people up-to-date on what we crazy volunteers are actually doing to try to help Burkina Faso develop on top of other fun stuff for us PCVs in BF.

So, in other crazy news, the weather! First week was cold (50s to 60s); second week was HOT (over 100); third week it was hot and humid which meant it RAINED!!! Twice in fact in the third week of February. This week it has just been hot is all. So, the month of February has gotten all four "seasons" that BF normally gets in a year:

• hot season, March through May, over 100 daily
  
• rainy season, June through August, rains often
  
• mini-hot season, September through October, gets hot as everything dries out
  
• cold season,November through February, dry, windy and cold (for Africa that is)

March is upon us! So happy birthday soon to my dad and all the other March birthdays! I will be heading back to village probably tomorrow morning with a nice cheery 65 km bike ride (short story but not a lot of time) or 15 km (if I get lucky).

Thanks to all the people who have written recently: TE and CS in particular.

I promise to be online in the second week of March, so be ready for more contact from Africa!