A Week in My Life- Friday!

Hello, The week has been flying by! Here’s what happened on FRIDAY!  And sorry the delay, the electricity seems to be out every time I go to use the internet!

6:45-The plan was to sleep in today, but with all the morning movmento, 6:45 is pretty much the limit of “sleeping in.” I only teach primary school in the afternoon on Fridays, so I have mornings free. I usually get up early and go with one of my friends to work in their fields, picking beans, weeding, carrying water, cutting hay, or helping with whatever they are doing that day.  Today, I stay home from the fields because I need to go to school and make an announcement for my 8^th graders.

Some of my 8th graders being silly

8 a.m.- 11:30 I head to school to talk to my eight graders.  I remind them to study for their standardized test (the PGI) during break and I bring a list of all the topics we covered this year to guide their studies. I hangout at school waiting until my students have a falga (free period), then give them a quick review session, give them the list of material, and go over some of the study skills we have been working on- flash cards, practicing writing compositions, or having a friend or family member quiz them.  Now that I have seen the test material, I know that it will be very difficult for many of my students, so I a try my best to convince them to spend a little time each day during their break studying…hopefully they will take my advice!

12 pm- 2p.m. I get back to my house, and stop in to greet the neighbors. I sit with my friend and her baby and chat about the day so far. She makes me some  cous-cous (kind of like steamed corn-bread, not anything like what we call cous-cous at home) with milk and we talk about my ADORABLE baby friend. He is getting big so fast and is one of the cutest, most happy babies I have ever met. He barely ever cries, is super curious, and loves to play, so needless to say we get along great! As his mother and I sit and talk, we sort a pile of beans. We pick out only the white fava beans, to be used in the katxupa which is boiling away over a fire beside us, then we pick out rocks, beans which have been half eaten by bugs, and leave the rest to be sorted another time.



cous-cous ku leti

My best baby friend and I!

2 p.m.-5p.m. – I go back across the street to my house and start to get ready to go to school before I remember  that the primary school has already begun their break. Usually, I would hike up the hill to teach 6^th grade English from 3-5pm on Fridays, but today I spend some quality time deep-cleaning my house instead. I scrub surfaces with bleach, clean the bathroom until is sparkles, and sweep and mop my floors. Excessively cleaning at least once a week is pretty essential to keep the cockroach population out of my house. If things are dirty, GIANT cockroaches find their way to the mess, so I try to keeps things sparkling clean.  

5p.m.- 6:30p.m. I bake some biscuits to take along on a hike some kids and I are going on tomorrow, wash my dishes, and sit back to enjoy my newly cleaned house. I definitely do not live in the typical mud hut I had envisioned myself inhabiting during my Peace Corps service, and although I was at first frustrated by the lack of a challenge in my living situation, I have come to really appreciate how lucky I am to live in what I refer to as “The Pink Princess Palace.”  I live in the top portion of a giant, newly painted pink, house at the top of a hill. I have beautifully tiled floors, a flushing toilet, a refrigerator, a giant window overlooking the ocean and neighboring island of Brava in my kitchen, a shaded patio full of gorgeous plants, and access to my roof which looks out upon some truly remarkable scenery and sunsets.  So although I have encountered and continue to overcome many challenges in my Peace Corps service, a difficult living situation is by no means one of those challenges. 

Biscuits!

7p.m-8 p.m. I make dinner, a dish that my host mother during training on the island of Santiago taught me how to make. First I sauté onions, garlic, tomatoes, kale, and left over beans in a pot with some spices. Then I fill the pot with water, bring it to a boil, and add coarsely ground corn flour, stirring until the mixture takes on a thick porridge consistency.   It is delicious and reminds me of the two months I spent with an amazing host family during my Peace Corps training. I send my host mother a text about what I made for dinner adding that I miss her lots, and quickly receive a reply “Oi filha, teni txeu, txeu sodadi di bo. Sa ta spera bo sta dretu! N Kre odja bo antis di bu bai! Quando bo ta ben Gil Bispo? Love!” (hi daughter, I miss you very very much. I hope you are well. I want to see you before you leave. When are you going to come to Gil Bispo?). I really want to see my host family again before heading to Mozambique and am hoping to find time to make the trip to the island of Santiago during the summer. 

8:30- 10 p.m. I take my nightly bucket bath, washing away the sweat and sunscreen of the day, then sit down to write my blog entry and type up some responses to e-mails to send next time I get to the internet.

10:30 – bed time since I will be up bright and early tomorrow to go hiking!

Thank for reading, and since I know a lot of you have been wondering, my rash turned out to be a fungus. I have been putting medicated cream on it, and it is getting better! Do to popular demand, I’ll be posting a before and after pic in my next entry!

Love,

Szasha