Announcement Announcement Announcement!

Exciting announcement everyone! My leave for August has been approved so looks like I’m coming home for a visit. The dates right now are the 1-24 but they could change slightly since I’m using a stand-by ticket. It’s nice to look forward to the trip back to Atlanta in less than 5 months. Even though this may seem like a long time, time has been flying by pretty fast for me so I’m sure it’ll be here in no time.

Mango season is finally here so that makes me one very happy lady. Mango is my favorite fruit and there are mango trees all around my village so I can get fruit here instead of having to go buy it in the market. Plus I was getting pretty tired of my daily orange. It’s nice to add some variety. My student Felicity who stays with me has been bringing some from her house and other neighbors and fellow teachers of mine have also been sharing with me so to make it even better I’ve gotten them for free! Another plus, to eating an orange or mango every day is invariable I get it stuck in my teeth so it forces me to floss. Flossing is something I aspire to do on a daily basis but back in the States I was always lazy. But here I need to plus have the time so it’s a good habit to form.

Two of my students, Sarah and Diana, last week asked me to go for training with them. Though I didn’t like their reason (they’d heard men don’t like big women), I agreed to go with them because I want to promote exercise and definitely could use some myself. Thankfully the past week it has been a bit cooler (more on that to come) so it was bearable to go for a short run. We just started small and ran to the nearby dam and back. Besides it being good for my body it also helps me be social since I greet people along the way. Also the kids run out to the path and I give them high fives. Sometimes they even join in and run with us for a little while. I could already tell once we got back that I was going to be really sore since I’ve lost a lot of muscle here. Only Diana and I went for a run yesterday so I hope tomorrow it’s not just me alone.

On Sunday while waiting for 3 hours for the lorry to come to go to Sandema market, I sat a while with Madam Diana, the other lady teacher at the school. She started waiting even earlier than me. I was asking her about the weather because the wind is still around thankfully but I thought it was supposed to be gone by now. She said usually in March it’s just hot with no wind so everyone is saying that God has answered their prayers about CSM (Cerebro Spinal Meningitis) not spreading. The dryness makes it easier for it to spread. Transportation is definitely an issue in our community. We didn’t even get to Sandema until noon on Sunday so many of the market women who sells their goods from our village lost valuable time where they could be making money.

Our form 3 students are in the process of writing down their names and nicknames so they can get t-shirts made since they are about to ‘graduate.’ Today some of the girls asked me to help give them nicknames because they didn’t like theirs. I came up with Smiling Sweetheart for one girl named Gifty who smiles a lot and Princess of Laughter for Felicity who stays with me since she likes to laugh. My other roommate Sarah was also looking for one so when I saw her dancing while walking away from school this afternoon I thought of a perfect one- Dancing Queen. I then went home and played the Abba song for her. We also had fun taking pictures with my web cam! I took the one with the New York skyline to go with my homecoming announcement and like the one of Felicity wearing her princess crown. We’ll see if the nicknames actually stick or if like typical teenagers they change it to something else tomorrow. During class with them today I was advising them to make sure to have their own math set (containing a protractor, compass, ruler, etc) before they take their big test next month. They were trying to tell me they didn’t have enough money (one costs 1 cedi, 50 pewawas) so I asked them how much their t-shirts were going to cost. 8 cedis... enough said.