Practice School Starts Monday!

It turns out that teaching English just isn't very tough. I had my first hour long lesson yesterday and it went really well...my trainer told me I have a "great teacher voice." I think it's cause I'm bossy. Anyway, this week I will finally be teaching real students - they are going to be Terminale students, 13th grade, and it should be good practice. I have 2 hours of teaching and 2 hours observing to do a day. Up until this week I hadn't really cared about being a teacher - I was, and still am, happy to be here, but teaching wasn't anything I was really pumped about. That's changing now. I spent a long time with my host sister on Thursday night and we went through her entire notebook from last year's English class. It was incredibly short. She was supposed to have English 2 times a week, but her professor only came once a week and was teaching University English the other day. And there were a million errors in her notes - not her fault. I have met her professor - he just doesn't speak English. It's so sad - these kids are so smart, but really don't have anything. No textbooks, no reading materials, no markers, etc. But they are all so happy and eager to learn, so I'm really glad that I'm here and I can try and do my part.

We have 3 weeks of practice school and then training is essentially over. It seems like it's taken forever and that it's flying by at the same time. Some people don't like training at all, because we are babied and busy and it's a pain, but I'm having a great time. And I know I'm going to sob when I say good-bye to my host family!

A note about my host family: there are 3 teenage girls living with me and they are all in school. That is NOT normal in Guinea. My mom works as a primary school teacher. They are amazing and patron-y. Patrons are rich people in Guinea. Rich is relative here, but they do have a lot compared to other families in Forecariah. This week my mom was in Conakry and she came home with a lot of fabric and a DVD player! I promised them that we would have a Mariah Carey dance party sometime soon, since the DVD player also plays CDs. My sister was in my one hour lesson yesterday and she was so good. I introduced myself as Madame Soumah and as her sister, so the kids seemed to behave really well for me. Hopefully practice school will go as well as Friday's class!

Hmmm, what else about Guinea? I meant to write down some ideas before we got to Conakry today, but didn't get a chance.

A few things:

The chickens are multiplying. There were 5 when I arrived. Now there are at least 25. And a sheep. It's insane! But the Peace Corps just issued us some Tamiflu, so don't worry about my proximity to chickens. :)

Conakry may be a hellhole, but there's nice stuff here. I'm sitting in an internet cafe that is as nice as anything you would find in the US - and I used the bathroom and it was gorgeous! My life here is so silly sometimes, but I was so excited to use a real toilet that flushed and there was already toilet paper there and soap and a sink. Fricking incredible. We also went to a French restaurant called Le Damier and everything there looks like the Grand Central Market - delicious French breads, treats, pastries, chocolates, it was so nice! So maybe I don't hate Conakry after all - I have some Gouda and crackers in my bag just begging to be eaten.

I still think I want to do development work and am having a good time talking to people about the politics, etc. here. You all remember how annoying I could be when I wanted to talk about international development and politics? Well, I've found some kindred spirits - there's even 4 of us who have international studies/poli sci double majors! And we are all English teachers, since we aren't qualified to teach anything else. Ahh, a liberal arts degree.

In good news, my French has dramatically improved. I moved from Intermediate Low to Advanced Low, so now I start Pulaar class! I am pretty proud of myself about that, because it's not that easy to move up 4 levels in 4 weeks! Mr. Peche should be proud, since I obviously retained a lot of information from a long time ago and just had to find it in my brain.

Okay, I don't have much time left and am not sure when I'll be back to a computer, but I hope everyone is doing well. Email me! Or send letters! I'll update again after practice school.