Hiking Around

Craziness and overload don’t begin to describe this week. To begin, it is always a huge job finding a hike (ride) back to school no Sundays. It consists of multiple phone calls, text messages and waiting (everyone is on African time). So this Sunday was no different. I was scrambling to find a ride without them leaving me. The thing is, you can’t hike to or from my school so you have to make sure that a coworker or someone from the location will be in Opuwo or heading back on Sunday. I am sure one of these weekends I will be left haha. You really are at the mercy of other people. My ride back consisted of a little CRV with 10 people crammed inside with luggage and groceries everywhere. It was a tight, hot, ride but I managed. It isn’t the worst that has happened. **Side story** I have had to take a ride to school in a CRV with 9 people and a live chicken jumping around in the front seat all while a Herero woman kept hitting me with her hat and digging her elbows into my hip bones. Then there was a ride in a CRV with 7 people and a live goat that was tied up in the back of the car. The goat cried the entire hour and a half in!. THEN there was a ride where it was also in a CRV and I had the guy behind me throwing up the entire ride. Thankfully we stopped in time for him to do it out the trunk door; most of the time. As I write this I am currently riding in the back of an enclosed pick up truck with my boss of the region. It gets very bumpy and hot but I have become Namibian enough that I can type a blog post in the back of a pick up haha.

**Side story over**

As mentioned before we switched up the classes we will be teaching so Monday was the first day that I really taught my new classes. Grade 5 is HUGE and pretty much consists of 88 eyes staring at you the whole time. I have already had to break up a fight and raise my voice. They just laugh because they have no idea what I am saying. We just decided today that we will be splitting Grade 5 into 2 classes so they will be smaller but this means more teaching. I am loving that I get to teach my Grade 7s 3 subjects. I see them about 20 periods a week and am really beginning to know them AND they get my jokes and sarcasm, something that doesn’t usually translate here. My afternoons and nights are spent planning and grading. Wednesday night I spent hours grading 3 tests and creating one for Grade 7 math. It is tedious work but I usually put a movie on, get my dinner and multi task. It makes me feel like I am back in college. Today I got asked to be the new choir director because the other one now has to teach in the afternoon. My initial response was I can’t sing in Otjiherero which got a laugh and a “Miss, our native language is English.” coming from a colleague whose English isn’t very good. I haven’t heard them sing one song in English so this could get very interesting and comical. Mom, you will be very proud that I finally came back around to music after leaving it in 10th grade :). This week was pretty long and had its challenges. On Monday I taught all morning and then went back into Opuwo for a couple hours. I am working to put together a grant proposal to build a garden at the school and that entails me meeting with vendors and getting quotes. I was able to do most of the work on Monday but still have a lot to write up and figure out. This is the hard part; once approved (hopefully) the “easy/fun part” of building it comes.I will talk more of that in another blog post. I didn’t get back home till about 9 pm that night and still had lesson planning for my one class to do. Tuesday went by smoothly until about 8pm. Wednesday got rough. The electricity went out at 8pm at my place so that made getting work done hard. I ended up just chilling and trying to grade. I gave up, put a movie on; which then my laptop died, and went to bed. The electricity was off for a while so I had to mop my kitchen periodically as my fridge almost all defrosted. As soon as the electricity came back on the water went out for a while. I guess you can’t have both here haha. It was all good though, you find ways to cope :). The rest of the week was filled with workouts, gradings, and planning. It was a nice break to have a few people call my landline on Wednesday. I was able to talk to my mom, grandma, my friend Ben and Mailin about work questions haha. Every little bit is a nice break. The weeks are going by really fast here; for the most part. I say that I need to have a cameraman follow me around for a week just so everyone can laugh at the things I do. Life here is so different than home but I love it!