Hello everyone!!!

I apologize for not posting for the last two months. I unfortunately have no Internet (or electricity for that matter) at my site in Gougoudje. The last two months have been amazing and I'm feeling quite at home here in Guinea now. My French has improved a lot and I have even started to learn some Pular (seeda seeda). Since so many things have happened and I could go on for pages telling stories, I have decided to give you a quick summary of the last two months and then set up some themed posts to go up every week telling different stories or giving insight into different aspects of Guinean culture.

So, after being installed at my site in late September, I had my first class on October 3rd. Not many kids showed up for the first day and some of the teachers weren't even back from vacation yet. I talked to other volunteers and they had similar first days. Things picked up by the second week of school though and by the third week of school I was getting 55 students in my 9eme class and about 30 in my 10eme class on a regular basis. The 9eme class is very far behind and the 9eme program is very rigorous so I've been doing my best to get them up to speed on the material that they should have learned in 7eme and 8eme. Although it is very challenging and can be frustrating explaining negative numbers almost every class, it feels good when I can tell that they're starting to understand. At the end of the school year, the 10eme students are required to take the brevee which is a test that determines whether or not they can continue on to lycee (high school). To give them some extra practice I started some optional review sessions after school. I really like these because I can work with the students one on one and give them problems to do according to their level of comprehension. I always look forward to these. Sometimes I give them cookies if they come haha. I started the same thing for 9eme a couple weeks later so I could work with the kids who were really behind. Unfortunately, most of these kids don't come to the reviews.I think that's a good summary of school. I'll have a more focused post about that in the coming weeks. Now, I'll try to give you an idea of what a "day in the life" is like for me here in Guinea.

A typical day usually involves waking up around 6:30 and revising my lesson plans for the day and then maybe eating breakfast and listening to the radio. Then if it is a Monday, Tuesday, or Thursday, I head to class at 8:00. I teach until 12:15 with a 15 minute break at 10:00. Then I usually eat a snack and take a nap, listen to the radio, or chat with people until around 2:30 when I eat a lunch of rice and sauce with my host family. Then, after this I usually work on lesson plans, work in my garden for a little bit, listen to the radio, take a nap, or drink tea with my friend Diakite. As you can see, I do a lot of napping and listening to the radio. The BBC's world service has become a staple of my daily routine. Also, some other things  The sun goes down around 7:00pm and after that I usually lesson plan for a little bit and then eat dinner and chat with friends. Revision sessions are at 4:30pm on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and I started an English club with the 10eme students after their last class on Monday. Market day is on Saturday. I usually go around 1:00pm because the good food has arrived by that time but hasn't been sitting out long enough to go bad. Sometimes on Sundays I go to Telimele for their gigantic weekly market. If I run out of peanut butter sometimes I go on Wednesday. It's quite an exhausting 15km bike ride up the mountain to get to Telimele but it's always nice to hang out with Richard, the other volunteer who lives there. The downhill on the way back is also nice.

Now, on the topic of more current events, we celebrated Thanksgiving today in Conakry. Geoff, Richard, and I made the 7 hour bush taxi trip from Telimele so we could celebrate the "fete americain" with other volunteers from the basse cote region. It was very nice to see everyone and the dinner was absolutely amazing! We had turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, and most of the other typical fixings. We even had pumpkin pie! I am continuously amazed by the remarkable cooking abilities of my fellow volunteers. There is a volunteer cookbook here in the Conakry house that I would like to try a few recipes from to try at site. I'll have to let you know how that goes. Anyway, I apologize again for the long delay. As I said, I will set up some automatic posts covering certain topics of life here so check back next week for themed post number 1. I would like to post again in about a month but I can't really say for sure when the next actual update will be. Overall, I have to say that things are going very well here and I am very satisfied with my experience so far. I've made some great friends and I'm learning a lot about myself too. Until next time, peace.