I think I can, I think I can...

I was just at home getting all worked up about teaching tomorrow. Teaching 150 kids? Even if only half show up that's still 75 kids!!! Eek. But I got my butt out of my house and went to the school to try and talk to another English teacher. None of them were there, but I met some more teachers and talked with my friend Mr. Barry. Now I feel much better. He basically told me not to worry about it in 10 different ways. I'm going to take his advice, plan a short lesson and try and figure out how to gauge the students English tomorrow during class. It's going to be hard teaching a subject where talking is so important while still trying to get all 100 plus kids to stay quiet most of the time. Hmmm.

My house is great but empty. The guardian at my concession is a really nice guy who speaks no French but also works at a bakery that sells bread that rivals the baguettes you'd buy in Paris. Yum. I've had lots of visitors and have kept up my 2 yogurt a day habit from the tailor - who would guess that a tailor would have the best yogurt in country? And a small bag of it is 500 francs, less than 10 cents. People here sell some of the funniest things and it's so hard to guess where to buy anything. At first it just seems like chaos but I'm starting to see that there's a method to the madness. Yesterday I was with 2 Volunteers and we were looking for honey. We found some market ladies that the other girls knew and figured out the Pulaar word for honey and then they took us to this shop that looked like a mechanic's garage. We were sure they had no idea what we were looking for but were too embarrassed to tell us - Guineans don't like to tell you if they don't know something. The men busted out these large gas containers and they were actually full of honey! We bought 3 liters of the stuff for 24 mille, or about 4 dollars. It amazes me the stuff you can track down!

Still no screens, but my counterpart told me he saw the guy working on them yesterday and he's sure they will be done tomorrow. I'm going to have him or another person from the school come with me to bargain for some furniture soon - I really need some shelving in my house. And right now I relax on my bed or ThermaRest pad in the living room, so I should really get a couch and some chairs!

Wish me luck tomorrow as I attempt to navigate my way through a high school of 3,600 while being the only white person/English speaker/new teacher!