Tea: The Cappuccino of BF

Yesterday, I learned about the tea making process with a bunch of other stagiaires. It is a popular passtime here since much time is spent in the whole process and really, the main point is the asthetic and the chatting that goes on. It has all the aspects of drinking alcohol socially, minus the alcohol, spending of money, and inebriation. I think I am going to pick up the habit once I get to site. It is a nice way to pass the morning or afternoon.

First, you must light the charcoal (charbon) and let it heat up. Then you place one tea kettle on the charcoal with water and let it heat up with the tea until it is bien cuit. The tea goes through an intense reboiling, reheating and sugaring process until the first tea is ready. The first tea is much like cappucino and the most important part is the foam (mousse) and the incredible thick and sludgy aspect of the first tea. Afterwards, you repeat the process of much pouring back and forth for the second tea and the third teas. Optional is the mint, which I really did enjoy.

I am not really doing justice to the whole process and describing all the steps, but I am sure one of th other stagiaires will blog about the actual process.

In other news, I am giving my first test tommorrow. We will see how that goes. Speaking of which, I am running out of time and need to finish writing up my exam and have the francais and the logistics of the exam reviewed by the facilitators to see if the test I am giving is comprehensible and also reasonable.

End of Week 7

It is hard to believe that I am now finishing up my seventh official week of training. I am done with my first full week of classes. It was tiring even though I only taught for a grand total of five hours this week. Each day the USA seems farther away.

Next week I am teaching seven hours, but in reality I am giving a devoir (or test) for two of those hours. I cheated today while teaching and had my students spend half an hour copying the exercises I wanted them to do at home (again the whole lack of text books thing really takes away from valuable teaching time, but I am not complaining because it means less time for me having to explain things in French). I will be pretty busy though, since I want to spend as much time as possible reviewing for the test and also observing the 3e class (think freshman in high school) since I am going to try to teach 3e math (a class of 100) in week 9. Which also means I have to relearn some math, understand it in a foreign language, and then figure out how to explain it in a foreign language.

I think the material for my current class is pretty easy, but its only been review of perimeters and areas of standard quadrilaterals. Nothing fancy. Giving them a test will probably be tough, even tougher will be grading it. I think I need more paper to write the problems out on before the test because I don't think I wrote my exercises big enough this time.

I added some links to other people's blogs on the links page, but the more internet savvy or aggressive people like my mom (hi mom, I love you!) has probably read all of their blogs multiple times. I think almost all of the SE PCTs are in the internet cafe right now because they gave us some free time after class today. Ran out of time as per usual.

Wish items: powdered drink mixes, tea, text messages, and letters.

A la prochaine!

I figure...

That I should spend my money on the internet while I can. Because in the future, I won't be able to do it as often.

So, today I wanted to review an exercise on the rhombus and then bust through the concept of parallelograms and then hit up perimeters and areas. Malheureusement, I only got to perimeters.

But tomorrow, I will teach areas and have them measure the classroom with their ten cm rulers. It will be fun, but take up the whole hour for sure. And then, Friday, I am thinking trapezoids and I got some fun applications thought out.

Some cool pictures from Jim Barry's trip in Mali (I think I might be closer to Mali than to the capital. Qui sait?)

Only a few minutes left. Send me emails and leave comments.

And So It Begins...

Model school started last week; and officially, I began teaching this week (though I taught division of fractions last week in a full one hour lesson). Apparently, my years of customer service have made me very patient with children. Though today, I did kick a student out of class because he refused to come to the board.

Yesterday, I considered a success even though my students were not given bonne motivation because I did not vomit in class despite strong desires to do so. So far, these past few days have been up and down health wise. Making me feel like a yo-yo who also has to figure out how the heck to make quadrilaterals and their properties interesting. I am hoping to hit parallelograms and areas and perimeters tomorrow, and trapezoids on Thursday. And then something fun and not rote on Friday. Though, I haven't figured out a fun activity for reviewing it all as of yet.

A lot of people have asked me for photos. Unfortunately, these are hit or miss since I haven't been very camera happy and some days the internet does not like the idea of me checking my email, let alone uploading photographs.

Healthwise, I am doing well after a sleepless Sunday night. I wanted to say hello to all the parents and friends of current stagiaires out there because I have been informed that my life sounds cushy as of yet (friend of C---). Don't worry though. In a month, I will be shopping for furniture (a disaster awaiting to happen) for my new house, including necessities like a stovetop, a ridiculous number of marmites and tamarinds, and necessary furniture like a bed, a wardrobe, and a cupboard for dishes and food. How do I plan to protect all this from pests? I have been informed that large cans filled partially with kerosene deter pests well and then putting the furniture legs into said cans. So; I think thats my plan of attack contre my friends the creepy crawlies. BTW, I have seen and killed already the "scorpion carrying spider" in the first few weeks, I just didn't realize what it is until recently. I don't think it looks like a spider, but that's what the call it. I have not seen a scorpion yet, but I promise to have at least one amusing story about that and poisonous snakes by the end of service.

A little bit about my site and my experience with transport: I am off the paved road by about 100 km. I hear I have to travel 40 km to get to the nearest unreliable source of internet (and also no daily transport there, so you figure out how I travelled there afterwards to visit a current PCV). Though, there is a slim possibility that I will have internet within 12 km of me (I am not holding my breath though). In theory, I am three hours from capital. In practice, I woke up at 4 am for a 6-7 am bus. I didn't get to my site until well after dark at around 8 pm. In total, I think I saw my site in about six hours of daylight. It is pretty, with lots of trees. It is fairly large, but not as densely packed as the volunteer who I visited later on in the week. I met my proviseur, and some people around village, but for the most part, people were out cultivating. I have met some people who come from that village and general region. And because of the many different tribes, I am considered a sister of theirs now. However, this means I have a "joking relationship" with one of the larger groups in BF, the Mossi people. It makes for a lot of fun joking around during breaks since a lot of the staff are Mossi. "They" say my people aren't very nice, but we all know I'm not very nice. So, I think I'm fitting in well culturally. ;p

All right, I got two minutes to go. Hope this provided life is being good to you all.

Another Short

I don't really have that much to say right now, but I felt obligated to blog since I'm splurging this week and hanging out at the internet cafe twice (so far).

Model school started officially, and either tomorrow or Friday, I will be doing my first co-teach. On Monday, I get up and do my first full hour lesson by myself. I am worried of course, and probably will spend most of this weekend preparing my lessons (since I signed up to teach both 6e and 3e math).

The summary of the past few weeks: sick combined with travelling on public transport. Not exactly easy out here. I think I hit reality a lot more than some of the other PCTs though.

Quickie

Thanks for all of the comments everyone. I know where I will be stationed for the next two years. I will send that out in a private email later. Got to bike to class!