Sunday, May 5, 2013

Three More Months!


May, June, July. That’s it. Safe to say that I am a mess of emotions right now. Excitement about seeing friends and family back home, apprehension about reverse culture shock (a.k.a. I have picked up some weird habits here), guilt and sadness about leaving my students, friends and community behind, uneasiness about future grad school/career options, etc. etc. are all running through my head right now. I am in a weird sort of limbo where I know that every day is one of my last and I am trying to keep living life like how I have been over the last two years, but at the same time I am feeling this pressure to do all of the things that I never got around to doing. It’s mostly turning out to be a productive thing, I have gotten a lot of work done these last few weeks and with school starting up, I hope I can continue that trend.

It’s hard to believe that this will be my last term teaching. Again, a bittersweet goodbye. On days like today where I had to proctor an exam and I caught half of the kids unabashedly cheating, I am over teaching. But on the first day back this week I had a bunch of kids come up and ask where I had been the last two weeks of last term and if everything was okay. (Unfortunately I had some security issues at my house and had to go to Freetown for those two weeks. The issue is resolved now, and everything is fine.) Every day is a mood swing, but the good parts definitely outweigh the bad.

In other news, I got a dog! His name is Pepe and I got him to be an extra form of security. He is small, but his bark is ferocious. We’re still working on the house training, but as they say here, small small. Who would have thought that I would have two pets? Definitely not me. Yathiki (my cat) is not too thrilled about the new addition to our family, but she is managing the intrusion as best as can be expected J

This week we actually start teaching (this last week was just exams left over from last term). I am nervous because the BECE is approaching. The BECE is an external exam given all over West Africa in order to determine if students are qualified to pass from middle school to high school. I have been teaching the students who are going to take the BECE for the last two years and I hope that they will be able to do well in Integrated Science. We will see. Unfortunately a lot of them have lost their motivation and are relying on teachers to help them with the answers so that they can pass. They know not to ask me though, since I have made a recurrent spectacle of myself in regards to my opinion on cheating and my intolerance of it on my exams. This just makes me worry that the students will do great in all of their other subjects and fail Integrated Science horribly. Oh well, it's the principle of the thing, right? 

Alright, my time with the internet is coming to a close. I should try to post this blog before the connection goes out. Thanks so much to everyone who has been praying for me! It has definitely shown itself this last month. Love and miss you and see you soon!