Monday 6-2-14

Monday 6-2-14

                Jove was up much of last night with a horrible cough. I kept trying to get him awake enough to take some medicine, but he was having none of that. I even tried to open his mouth to just let the chewable meds dissolve in his mouth, but that just pissed him off. Even though it was pretty cold outside (and inside) the poor little guy was so soaked with sweat that it looked as if he had just gotten out of the shower and he showered with his clothes on.

                It was finally 6:30, time to wake up. I was finally able to get my buddy to take some medicine. It seemed to help pretty quickly even though it was just ibuprophen. I did make him some tea also, but he said it was too yucky and he wouldn’t drink it.

                I made the kids up a piece of toast and they also had the remaining pancakes from yesterday. I was in the kitchen starting to do some of the dishes up when our ground water ran out. I wasn’t sure what I should do, but decided to send a message to Isaac, hoping that he would know whom to contact. We have to have our ground water at this house because the school gets their water from here, and so if school is to have water, we have to have the water diverted back to the house early.

                We got to school and as I was preparing to start the day, I found out that one of our students had a sibling die over the weekend. She was in std so our std 2 class is obviously having a bad day. But I was glad to see that Blandina was not in school, she was able to be home with her family to mourn.

                In Std.1 a few of the students are going to drive me crazy. They owed me homework from Thursday, on Friday I was too busy so I couldn’t check to make sure they did it. Lucky them, they got extra time. Well, the one, Robert, that was still working on homework from Wednesday that he didn’t do, so ending up with more on Thursday due on Friday. Well he claims he left his homework at a friend’s house. Another child tried to get away with only doing 80 of the 100 sentences that were given to him. And the others, well they didn’t give me an excuse at all. So Robert now has 500 sentences of “I will bring my homework to school”. I am tired of the few thinking they can not do what I tell them, just because I am not Teacher Liz. Hopefully they will learn that even though I am softer than Teacher Liz, I am not to be ignored.

                In std.3 I brought in the nice blue journals that Mamaliz had bought in Dar using the money from the shoe sales. I love that we gave shoes away to the individuals that could not afford anything, and the ones that could afford, we sold the shoes for really cheap. That was enough money to get the journals for the remaining kids in std3 that hadn’t gotten them before, and all of std 2 where none of the kids had them. The look on the kids faces just made me so happy. I love that something as simple as a nice journal to write it can bring so much joy. The first thing to go into their journal was a book report about the library book they checked out last week. Some of them did pretty well, others, well just copied a few pages out of the book. No worries though, the ones that did that are the ones that have less English skills.

                I came home for lunch and heated up some leftover chili since the kids didn’t seem to like it this time around and I refuse to waste food unless it has gone spoiled. So I ate more of that. I spent my time talking to Asa on the internet and eating, then made some coffee to go with me to school since I was pretty tired from lack of sleep. The water came back on right before I left to go back to school, so it was nice that I didn’t have to worry about that anymore.

                Off to school and I did the usual things in std.2. I let them know after our flash cards and word recognition sheets I had a surprise for them. It was funny listening to them try to guess what it was I brought for them. It went from shoes, candy, cookies, to story books, back to shoes, and a few others I don’t remember. When I pulled the journals out they went crazy. They were so excited to have the same journals as the std3 kids. It was like they had magically grown up enough to earn these books. I left the first entry up to them to choose their own topic. We had about half write about themselves and the other half write about their teachers. It was cute. After journals I began introducing equal equations (16+5 is equal to 7 x 3)to them. I assumed they knew about these since it was on the mid-term, but I guess they had forgotten or Mamaliz hadn’t gotten to them yet. So I explained and we did some and I think they are getting it.

                I locked up the few rooms, but since Teacher Beatrice and Teacher Grace were still cleaning up in their rooms I obviously didn’t lock those. I knew I had a bit to take care of today, so I didn’t wait to be the last one out of the school. I headed home and hadn’t been in the door for more than thirty seconds when a few kids come running up. Turns out the teachers had sent them up to see me, claiming that I took their keys (the teachers have a bad tendency to lose the school keys). So the kids were sent up to have me hurry as fast as I could so I could go down and lock up the school. I knew I didn’t take the keys and I needed to head up to the market instead of back down to the school, but down I went. When I got to the school, there was no one there waiting. The teachers just left the school wide open for anyone to go in and steal as they pleased. I am amazed that it didn’t happen that way. So I went in to look for their keys. Sure enough, they were lying on a bag of soap in the std1 room. They had fallen off a table right onto the bag of soap.

                I went to go return the keys when the guy I bought some stones from the other day saw me. He wanted to try to sell me more stones, but they weren’t the best of quality. I tried to let him know that I wasn’t interested, but he wanted Farida to interpret again. So we went up to find her at the market since she went there with Logan. He took me to her house first to see if she went there, but I kept trying to let him know she was going to be in the market. Luckily her older brother had some English and let him know what I was saying. We found her and I had her tell him that I wasn’t interested. He insisted I take his number in case I want to get any more. I started walking though the market and getting what I needed when Farida’s brother came up to me. Turns out there was another man that sold stones and he wanted to give me his number as well. So I took that one also, but probably won’t buy anything else unless it is a great deal. I thanked him for the number anyways and went along my way in the market. Joan stayed with me to help with translation for me. I got greens and 30 tomatoes (I make marinara a lot here). I decided to try these tiny white eggplant that Mamaliz says are bitter, but why not give them a chance. I was craving eggplant anyways and this may come close. I found some green bells, bananas, and at the very end I even found real eggplant for pretty cheap. I was so excited. Oh and since my pants won’t stop falling off I even got myself a belt. All in all it was a nice market visit. I paid Joan a few jelly beans for helping me.

                I got back to the house and tried to relax a little. Not much to do, but I decided I wasn’t going to do the after school classes today. I just needed time off. It may end up being that way more often than not. I just think I need some time to myself. I talked to Asa a little bit more. I even got on Skype with him so that Ayla could read him a story she wrote. She was so proud, so was I. I love it when she uses her imagination like that. Jove was a happy boy since we had bananas. He ate four of them, and only stopped because I made him. Samweli spent a good deal of time in the house as usual. He wrote me a story also about how he loves mom and mom loves him, same with dad. Then he drew a picture of me, Asa, Ayla, Jove, and of course Samweli. I think he would move back to America with us if we asked him.  I made the kids up hot dogs and parmesan noodles. I just didn’t want to cook anything more than that. Although I did make the last of the chili for myself to eat it up before it went bad. I let them watch “Arthur and the incredible” while they ate their dinner. As they ate, I went to get their baths ready. Nothing here works for long. The hot water was not working again, so I had to go to boiling water. It took forever! But kids are bathed and put into bed after a deal of “Mom, I love you. Goodnight Mom. See you in the morning Mom.” Etc.

                So I finally have quiet time, and what happens, the power goes out. Now I sit here trying to type and I am getting attacked by little bugs, so I am going to call it a night and go to bed. The flash light doesn’t even want to work, so I don’t even know how well my tote bath will go. It is an adventure, but sometimes I just wish things would work here.