Friday, February 17, 2012

Term Two Continues . . .

Hello all!

I'm currently in Freetown for the weekend, so I get to enjoy unlimited internet at the hostel, awesome. Also, we have electricity and actual showers here, living in luxury :) Since I have some time to kill (waiting on my friends to get in to the city) I figured I would write a quck post while Cat and I are absorbed in the interwebs.

Things at site are good. Just truckin away with second term. We finished our test one this week, so I've been working my way through those. Unfortunately, the results aren't that great. Since I actually started teaching the first week, a lot of the kids who just started coming to school didn't have the full note, or weren't there for any of the explanation. I know that these are things that are out of my control, but I can't help feel responsible when only 8 kids out of 50 pass the exam. Back to the drawing board, to try and figure out how I can get those scores up!

I don't actually have anything monumental to write about, so I'll just include as many random stories as possible. I apologize in advance for the disjointedness that is about to ensue.

A few weeks ago, Seray's dad sent a chicken for me. She was amused when I told her that I didn't want it to stay in my house for the few days before we cooked it. (If you don't know, I have a weird fear of birds, even if they are tied up at the feet). After a few days we cooked it which was quite the process. I've watched this happen a few times, and one day I want to be the one actually doing it, but goodness gracious is it complicated. First you have to kill the chicken, but girls can't kill it, a man has to because if a woman kills a chicken it will curse their future children. Gonna get around that one some how. After that, you boil water to pour on it which makes the feathers easier to pluck out. Then you wash the chicken and roast it quick. Then you butcher it, which is by far, the most complicated part of the process. When you are done seperating the edible parts from the unedible parts you steam it for awhile. Then finally you get to cook it, we decided to fry it. To go with the fried chicken I sauteed green beans and radishes with some yummy seasonings. The lady who works at the greenhouse at the mission hooked me up. It was so nice to get some veggies :) The best part of the meal was when I made some instant cheesey potatoes that my mom sent me. All you have to do is boil the water and then stir in the mix. Seray was astonished and didn't believe me when I told her it was done cooking and we could eat it. I shared the meal with Seray, her brother and my friend Mohamed. They didn't like the vegetables but they loved the chicken and the potatoes. It was fun to mix some American food in with Salone ingredients. Cooking is always a good way to spend time with people in my community and perpetuate the idea that I eat crazy American food :)

Valentine's Day was huge here. In Kamabai we had an outing and a jam with artists and DJs coming from Makeni. I didn't go to the outing (which is like a jam during the day) but Jessie and Chelsea came in from their sites to hit up the jam. It was really fun. Everyone was bluffin hardcore with their Valentines' red on. The funniest moment had to be when a boy was pushing around a stroller with a cooler in it all around the dance floor. Inside of the cooler is what they call 'ice' which is a kind of frozen yogurt sweet treat. I mean I understand you want to sell, but people were breaking it down and the stroller almost got tipped over a few times :) We ended up leaving early before the artists got there, because we had school the next day, but it was still really fun.

Hmmm sorry can't think of any more stories and the internet is extremely distracting today, so this will be a short and sweet post. Love and miss you all!