First days of teaching

Let me catch you up...

The travel here was exhausting and was also on a weekday so that meant we went straight to work the next day. I'm adjusting to the food and the confinement of the hotel and orphanage fairly well… not stir crazy yet.

 We had come into our trip under the impression we would have access to internet at the hotel, a very diverse menu, and also have the ability to enter town at our own willingness. A few things have changed in town since it was safe to roam the streets, white, and at night; in the last few months to a year the town has become home to many unfamiliar strangers, from out of town, which makes the town NOT safe for us to go into alone at night. Daytime is safer for us if we wanted to go into town but it is still a very unfamiliar and crowded city filled with locals who will up charge you unless you are with a local person who can help you get around and assure you a good price. This is unfortunate, only because there are a lot of things to see and experience in the town we may want the freedom to do on our own during down time, rather than with someone we know such as Emanuel, a co-worker and local at the orphanage who has been helping us around. The internet is not up and running, at least so far, and we have to either plan ahead and use the (very slow) interment at the orphanage which I can barely get on to any website or risk it and go to an internet café in town. The first time we went to the internet café we had a bad experience because our accounts to Facebook were hacked while we were trying to make contact with people. We are hoping to have the internet up and running in a few days which will help with our school preparation, family contact, and also a good pass time.

The food is getting to me, I usually eat a lot of sweets, but dessert is not priority here, I guess there not familiar with the saying “life is short eat dessert first” or “Stressed backwards is Desserts”. Even with the daily sugar intake I usually have lots of veggie and fruits which have also been lacking in my diet since arriving. I eat eggs and toast for breakfast and then have a snack bar in the middle of the day and for dinner I have chicken with either rice or fries. It is a lot of starch and not enough anything else. I will have to consciously eat more mangoes and other fruit.

  The children are so amazing; I am blown away by something new each day we spend with them. They are so incredibly welcoming, happy and genuinely excited to just look at us or hold our hands. We get to play with them in the afternoons; soccer, sewing, reading, movies, games, whatever we like, and this is one of my favorite times of day. Today (Monday) we brought them all a few jump ropes we brought over from America and also a soccer ball we bought from the local town vendor; they were so excited and thanked us over and over again for the gifts. It is so fun to see them react the way they do and interesting to me to see them never argue over who plays with what and be so good at sharing... not to mention you would never see a 6 year old boy playing with a princess jump rope back in the states, yet they don't bat an eye at picking it up to jump. 

For dinner I had chicken and fries again... very yummy but I am now craving either something sweet or a nice big salad covered in Italian dressing.... I will be a glommer when I get home I'm sure.