Merry Christmas!

I just realized that it has been almost a month since I last updated this blog. Well, the last month has just flown by! Christmas is just around the corner and I have been here for almost 5 months! In some ways time seems to go so quickly here, but then there are days when time just seems to stand still.

As I mentioned, Thanksgiving went well. I can't remember if I mentioned about our school football team (soccer). We won 3rd place in a tournament this year- Go Crocs! The boys were so excited and proud of themselves.

School was just one major whirlwind the past month. Between the beginning of the trimester, Christmas program stuff, progress reports and the actual program itself- I don't know where the time went. The program was this past Monday (which was also the last day of school). It went very well and we were all excited to see our kids finally perform. Needless to say we were also glad that it was over- I think we all needed a break and nice refresher. I have enjoyed being a lazy bum the past few days. Though it is also a holiday here and is tradition to go see your friends. So I have been doing that as well.

Next week we leave to go to Kenya for about 2 weeks. I am pretty pumped about that. It will be great to see some green again- and some wildlife other than geckos, roaches, ants, sheep, and goats :-)

That's about all the updates I have for now. Hope you all have a very merry Christmas!

Turkey Day!!!!

I hope everyone had a very happy thanksgiving. Mine was much better than I expected it to be- being my firsst thanksgiving away from family. We had a huge get together at a friends house with all the Americans we could find. I think they said there were about 80 plus people there not including the 30 something children. I loved having the children running around because it made it feel like home. One of the guys had traveled to the states and back the week before thanksgiving and in one of his stop overs in another country picked up a couple of turkeys. We were all super excited- though we each only got a small slice we still had turkey on thanksgiving in Africa :-) There was also mashed potatoes, dressing, green bean casserole, pumpkin pie, one pecan pie, and a couple more comfort foods from home. I ate way too much! It was so worth it though. We got in a big circle after we ate and sang, read a short story to the kids, and said what we were thankful for.

In other news, I have moved upstairs and have 3 new roomies. A girl from upstairs and I switched places, not by my choice, but I am getting adjusted. The girl that I am now sharing a room with and I rearranged our room yesterday. After a week of living in an unpacked chaotic room it's nice to be settled in. I am still adjusting to the new way of doing things up here, but my roomies are great. Last night we decorated for Christmas, ate leftovers from thanksgiving, and watched a Christmas movie (complete with hot chocolate). It was nice.

It is finally winter here (which feels more like spring in Florida). Last night we slept with the windows open and just fans, no a/c or air coolers. It's so nice and breezy at night and in the mornings. It still warms up in the afternoon but it's not nearly as hot as it has been before.

The football team (soccer really) from school has a huge tournament this afternoon. A bunch of us are going to support our students. They have been asking me to come for a while but the games are usually in the evening when I am in Arabic class. I am pretty excited because there are 4 students from year 4 on the team and I pretty much know the rest of the kids.

Starting tomorrow I will have a new schedule at school. I will not be working with just year 4 and 5. I am going to be spread out between reception (the 4 year olds), year 2, year 4, year 5, and year 6. So my schedule is about to become even busier at school. My base will still be in year 4, helping in the morning with homework, grading, copies, etc. But I will also be working with the other classes on literacy and fluency in reading.

Until later- have a good week and happy after-thanksgiving shopping! :-)

Marriage Proposals.....

Last week I went to this English club we have at one of our education centers. It was interesting- I had no idea what to expect. They sit each of the English speakers at a different table. Most of the people there are men- there are a few women. All of the people are learning English through the education center and this is just practice for them. You are given a sheet with the topic and some discussion questions and then you sit for about 1 to 2 hours and talk with them. It is interesting to hear their view on things, especially since each of the people come from a different cultural or religious background ;-) Then one person gets up for the table and talks about what we discussed at the table. Afterward is just some free time to talk and get to know people, relationship building. It was nice except for the fact that I was surrounded by men, which I am not used since being emeresed in the culture here. One of my guy friends said I looked like I was teaching Sunday school when I was talking them them- because they were kind of in a semicirlce around me. The conversation with them started out fine. You know the usual- where are you from, family, what do you do here, etc. But then we got on the subject of marriage somehow and religious views, which was still alright....until I started getting marriage proposals, HA! But then again- I am pretty much used to that from walking down the street hearing "Marry me, marry me- I love you!" And as many times as I have heard it it still cracks me up every time. Overall I did enjoy the conversations and maybe I affected a little bit of their way of thinking.

Arabic class is going well. My classmates, all 2 of them, are back from traveling so it's not just me any more.

I am going to visit one of my friends- the hokey pokey one if you look in previous blogs- on Friday. I am pretty excited. Even though I see her everyday at school it is more fun to hang out together at a home. Plus she has 3 sisters that I don't get to see very often :-)

The kids at school are just as cute as ever. It's so much fun getting to know them and be a part of their lives and growing process. Our school is small enough that I can get to know kids from other classes as well. We have about 200 students I believe. I love when the little ones come up in the morning wanting to play with me. It's like being a little kid myself again.

I am looking forward to Thanksgiving!!! We are having a huge get together with all the Americans, sort of like a potluck. I might even try to make some kind of pie!

Ok- that's all for now. Have a great week!

Random Pictures

Photobucket Album

The photos in the album above are just a few from the past 3 months (yes, I finally put them online...) Enjoy!

bumper cars

I just realized that it has been a while since I have updated my blog. I have been pretty busy with school, language classes, and meetings. I just celebrated a birthday here- thanks again to all those who sent messages :-) It was a lot of fun. Many of my kids made me cards, brought me gifts, and brought in candy and cookies. The cards and gifts were so cute because I could tell that they did the best they could. My roomies made me potstickers and mashed potatoes for dinner, YUMMY! And my mom had sent a cake mix and icing for me so I made cupcakes. Then a group of us went out for what was supposed to be ice cream, but we were all so full that we just got drinks. They have this new slushy machine at the place we went to, a-maz-ing!!!! And tonight we are all going bowling, yes BOWLING, woohoo! It is in celebration of about 3 or 4 birthdays from this week, so it will be fun.

Last week my small group met a public park that has rides and such- almost like a county fair. It was nice we had a picnic because they actually had grassy fields! Then we were going to ride some rides (which was going to be interesting in itself). Well we finally made it to the bumper cars but there was no one running the ride. The at the ticket booth said that he had gone to pray. So as we are waiting a bunch of little boys come running through us and get on the cars. Then some older teen boys came and started pushing them around in the cars- the whole time we are watching, the ride is not on, and the guy has yet to come. The guy finally shows up and they rush off of the cars and form a line where he tells them to....so we end up at the end of the line! When we finally reached the beginning of the line the guy starts talking to me and my friend who is also a girl. He starts making this motion like turning a wheel and pressing a button. My friend and I looked at each other and realized he was trying to tell us how to drive!!! We were laughing while he is still demonstrating for us. I finally told him we knew how to drive, though I don't think he believed us. It was a lot of fun to play around on the bumper cars and ram into each other. When we finished and as we were leaving I asked the guy if we had driven alright and he smiled and said, "Ok, Ok...."

I also met a woman the other day at the sandwich stand next to the school I work at. She wants me to teach her English and hang out. I am very excited about this opportunity ;-)

Ok- I am tired and in need of a nap. I will write more stories later :-)

hina, henna, hanna

Well- the long awaited Ramadan and Eid are over and we are back into the normal routine. Eid was nice a nice break for us. We had a women's retreat type thing for a couple days. We went to a club that had a nice and pretty fancy pool- best of all it was cold water :-) It really was nice to spend almost the whole day by/in the pool relaxing and restoring our childhood games (complete with diving lessons, cannonballs, tea parties, seeing who could hold their breath the longest, and of course making a chain of about a million people to see if we could swim through everyone's legs, HA!) After Eid we had a 2 day school week (which was also nice).

This weekend I went back to my friend's house (the hokey pokey crew from before). It was fun as usual. There was a neighbor over while we were there to do their mother's henna for a wedding. Since she was already there they offered for us to get henna as well. So I have my first real African henna on my right hand right now- pretty exciting, I must say! I really love those girls. (Oh- the title of this blog is because they all sound the same but hina=here, henna=what you get on your hands and feet, and hanna=a girl's name)

Also this weekend, I went to a new suug (market). It was extremely expensive so I just ended up with a new pair of shoes. It took us about 2 and half hours to get home though. We were in an amjaat (which is a public transport- similar to a taxi in the form of a minivan) sitting in stand still traffic for about and hour to and hour and a half- motor off, doors open, no a/c in at least 100 degree heat if not hotter. We (6 ladies) finally decided to try to walk home and see if we could beat the traffic. The only trouble with this was that we didn't exactly know where we were at... After asking a traffic cop where the main street next to our house was we started walking- not too confident in his directions. Still lost and confused we asked another man. This didn't really seem to help but we kept walking anyways. After a while we came to a main street when I realized that it was OUR major street (the girls did not believe me at first- but it was) I was so happy because I knew we were almost home. I arrived at my flat about 2 and a half to 3 hours after we left the market in what should have been a 20-30 minute drive. (Yes, the traffic was THAT bad!) But all of the ladies, myself included, had a great attitude about the whole thing, hunger and all, and we just chock it up to another cultural experience :-)

Nearing the end...

We are almost to the end of ramadan (woohoo!) This weekend starts the holiday of Eid (which is basically to celebrate the end of ramadan). In honor of Eid we have Sunday through Tuesday off from school (and Friday and Saturday of course). This makes me very happy :-)



Today my class got new desks and chairs (we would have gotten them earlier but they had to be built, ha) The kids were super excited which was a challenge today. We are still working on rearranging the odd shaped room to make it less awkward.



The other day I was waiting outside with some of the kids for drivers, parents, etc to pick them up. One of my little girls started singing the song, "That's the way, uh huh uh huh I like it uh huh uh huh..." It was all I could to not to start laughing. She said she had a dance to go with it too but was too shy to show me. So cute!



I have been on a marathon of home visits lately. All of our teachers do home visits to students' houses. It's nice because you get to know the family situation which shows you more about the student. Another reason I love home visits is that you get to be your fun self- not your teacher self :-)

I also visited my friend's home the other night. My roomies went with me, which was cool because there were 4 of us and my friend has 3 sisters- 4 and 4. They are very sweet and speak amazing English (though they were impressed with the little Arabic I know). Somehow we started singing. One of my roomies is the nursery teacher and would not sing on her own. So I told her we should do the hokey pokey (jokingly) and they all wanted to. We all got up and started teaching our new friends the hokey pokey. Just as we were all getting into it a neighbor pokes her head over the wall lauughing at us. It was a funny sight seeing 8 grown women doing the hokey pokey (especially if you have never seen it before, HA!) It was a great night though, we really got into great discussions deeper than surface level.

I believe that is all the updates I have for now :-)

Dancing Queen

So, during the month of ramadan they fast all day (including liquids) and at sundown they feast. The feast, or the "breaking of the fast" aka breakfast, is call fatuur.

Earlier this week I went to my neighbors' house for fatuur. I was so excited that they had invited me. So I get there with one of my other girl friends and it was very awkward. One of the reasons is because I am still learning the language so communication is tough, though some of them know a little English. I am learning to embrace awkwardness.

After a while they took us downstairs and outside to eat (after they prayed). The food was delicious! Even better were the fresh fruit juices. I have learned though that you must eat slow because they keep pushing food toward you the entire time. After we ate we had tea, of course, and sat and tried to talk for a while.

This is the fun part. They invited us back inside and we went upstairs into a room with the tv. Their favorite program was on- a singing show. One of the songs came on and they said it was a traditional dance song. So naturally I asked them to show me the dance. They resisted at first but after some arm twisting I got them to show me. Then some of the older women came in dancing and we all joined in. It was fun! We were all laughing hysterically and dancing. That definitely broke the awkwardness :-)

Over the next few days I have many more fatuurs to go to and I am pretty excited. That's all for now :-)

Not too much has happened since my last post. Language school is well underway. Although I don't realize it, I am learning a lot. Two of my four roomies have birthdays this week- so we had a drive in themed party last night. We borrowed the projector from school and made burgers and homemade fries and had ice cream. It was definitely a treat! :-)

The teacher for the class I have been working with comes in this week, woohoo! That will help the class be a lot more organized and we can get into the swing of things.

We are well into raamadan now. I still do not understand how these people can fast everything including liquids all day long and then feast and stay up all night. I have fasted one day (with liquids) and that was hard. It is so incredibly hot here that it seems like you could not go without liquids. I can see the toll it takes on the children here at school. They come in exhausted each day and some of them fast, others don't. We encourage them to drink water anyways because they play so hard.

I got a package from my mom last week! I was super excited. It had tons of great little foods for me and my roomies :-)

That's all for now. I will have more to write after I have been to a few fatuurs (the big meals they have in the evenings of raamadan to "break the fast")

Until then...

Pyramids and Camels

So, it's been a while since my last post because I have been busy and had no internet. Since my last post I have:

gone camping in the desert
ridden a camel
seen some pyramids
started language school
gone to my neighbor's engagement party
and there should probably be more to this list

We'll start with the camping trip. It was fun but we rode in the back of this prison looking truck. It was sort caged in so the air would flow through (which was nice) but it really did look like we were prisoners, ha. On the way we stopped on the side of the road because we saw these ball looking things. They are called desert pumpkins but are dried up, very lightweight, and easy to throw. So we had a "snowball fight" in the middle of the desert with these things.

Our first stop was the pyramids where we were greated by the men on camels and 2 bus loads of native children cheering as the white people drove up. It was pretty hilarious. So we get out of the truck and some of us (not me) proceeded to step in camel poo (camels really smell bad by the way). Then we decided to all roll down the sand dunes together. I enjoyed this except for the sand EVERYWHERE!!! :-) I think I still have sand in my ears. After this excitement we saw the pyramids and climbed on some of them. It was cool because most of them had hyroglyphics carved inside them. When were done with the pyramids we rode the camels back to the entrance. Definitely an interesting experience :-)

The next stop was the Royal City. So I am imaging this great eleborate city-no- it's the RUINS of this city. It was still pretty cool though. There was this mosaic tile floor from way back, still intact in the middle of the desert! We got to rinse of some of the sand off in the Nile and headed back to the truck. We stopped on the side of the road for lunch (in the shade).

On our way to the "campsite" we stopped where we were going to stay. Unfortunately there was family already there cooking their dinner- a salughtered goat, nice and ripe.... They gave us some "7 up" and we thanked them and left real fast before they offered us something else....

We finally got to our camp site and met up with some of our other people. There was this like mini-mountain thing of rocks so we climbed to the top, very proud of myself :-) We ate and slept under the stars.

Next on the list- langauge school. I started yesterday and now know the arabic alphabet. That's going well.

The neighbor's engagment party was interesting and I don't have time to write about it now, but will later.

Last but not least I wanted to leave a shout out to the Access Youth group (I hope I spelled the new name correctly...) I miss you guys tons! Keep in touch with me and let me know what is going on in your life (comments on here, facebook, email, etc) Hope to hear from you guys soon ;-)

Swimming :-)

This week has gone fairly well. There were a couple rough days with the kids a school, but I am beginning to build relationships with them which is a lot of fun. One of them made me a paper snowflake and wrote "Ms. Sussiee" on it. Even though it was spelled wrong it was really sweet. A couple other girls come up to me at lunch and share their cookies and tell me their stories and secrets. It's pretty cool :-) The year 4 teacher is still not here yet, they say another 3 weeks or so. Therefore I will be helping TEACH year 4. Having never taught before in my life, I will need a lot of grace and patience. But I know it will be fine and I will have a lot of help with lesson plans and such. Tuesday afternoon we had a meeting. The group had been sent a care package for all of us to share. My roomies and I scored some mac and cheese and pasta, yummy. Wednesday evening one of my roomies and I had childcare duty at the school for a meeting. It went a lot better than expected. We ended up with 15 kids ranging in ages from 2 to 10. Today, Thursday, we finished up our school week and had another meeting. The highlight of the day was the fact that we got to go swimming at the meeting!!! Granted the girls had to swim fully clothed, but I was just grateful for the opportunity. It was a lot of fun. We played some fun games and got to be ourselves with no reservations (other than the bathing suit options of course ;-) ) After swimming we had a cookout. It was nice to eat the African version of a chili cheese dog, potato salad, cookies, watermelon, etc. Other the absurd amount of flies it felt like an American cookout. I look forward to relaxing the next two days and enjoying our free time. My throat is extremely sore and has been all day long. If you could remember that in your prayers it would be awesome. I think that's all for now. The next post may not be for a while because our internet is picky about when it feels like working :-)

TGIT

So, here TGIF is changed to TGIT because Thursday is the end of our week. We have Friday and Saturday off and start the new week on Sunday. It has been a good first week though. I am getting to know the kids better at school and building relationships with them and their parents which is exciting.



We did laundry last night. It's always an interesting task to do. The washer is up on the roof and not hooked up to water. So we have this tiny little piece of hose to fill it from a sink. My roomies and I carry buckets of water up instead because it is faster. The problem is that it's 2 flights up. And then you have to press another button to get it to go into the next cycle and hang the clothes to dry. The bright side is that the clothes dry very quickly here :-)


Tonight we had another cultural moment. We had a small group meeting at a house about a 10 minute walk from mine. There were 3 of us walking and of course it starts to rain. We thought we could make it so we kept going. Well...it only rained harder and began to storm. Then we heard a very loud noise only to turn around and see sparks coming from the power lines. We seriously thought it was coming down. The one guy that was with the 2 of us girls (he didn't know exactly where we were going) wanted to stop and go into "shelter, run for cover" but us girls said no and kept walking, ha. Then we got to the major road we had to cross and there was a ditch on the other side. I told the guy to see if he could cross (so that I would know if I could or not :-) ) and he ended up slipping with one leg in the ditch up to his knee. I felt bad but still went around. Our umbrella was inside out but we made it to a covering across the street from where they live. But then didn't know which gate to use. Wait....it gets even more funny... So we call the guy who lives there to come to the side gate to let us in and he shows up with a towel on his head and his wife's clothes (to keep from getting wet) but it was HILARIOUS!!! Once we got inside we realized that the front door was too flooded to go in so we climbed through the side window. By this time I can't stop laughing :-) The wife made us all change into their clothing. The two of us girls ended up in her house dresses, which look like mumus for lack of better explanation, and the guy in his cordouroy pants and shirt. We were a sight to see, let me tell ya! To get home we all crammed in his truck. It was definitely a memorable evening!

The Great Flood...

So, I started school yesterday. I am an assistant for year 4 and 5 at the international school here (4th and 5th grade). It's a really neat school because the children are from all over the world. I love to hear the different accents from them :-) For most of them English is their 2nd, 3rd, maybe even 4th or more language. Plus they learn Arabic at our school. Today, just as school was getting out, it started raining. I don't mean just a drizzle, because when it rains here it pours! The whole playground was completely flooded (I will put up pictures of it when I can get them from someone). Of course the kids are going nuts and all choas has broken out. So we got them inside while we are swapping out buckets from the water pouring into the classrooms. It was fun (and I'm not being sarcastic there). Then we went to walk home. Of course the streets are flooded, cars splashing water and gunk (they think it's funny to splash hiwajdas-foreigners- here), and some cars are stuck. People were laughing at us as we slip on the mud and dodge splashes, though some people were helpful. It was nice to get home. But then I remembered that we had done laundry last night, which is a process in itself, so some of the clothes were still hanging up on the roof. Most of them were ok after the storm, but some had been strown across the roof. So I rewashed them by hand and hung them, as it started to rain again, HA :-) We all smile and laugh though and say, "Only in K-town." All in all it was a good, and eventful, day. Until later...

I'm in Africa!!!

Well, it was quite a long trip but I finally arrived here around 5:40pm Wednesday evening here. Had a lot of delays in flights and cancellations but didn't miss any flights, my luggage arrived with me, and it only took minutes to confirm my visa on arrival, woohoo!!! I live in a flat with 3 girls, there are 4 more from our team upstairs and in surrounding areas a lot more. My school is about a 10 min walk but I haven't been there yet. They let me have today off to rest and unpack. The girls were very welcoming and made me dinner, etc last ngiht. Today I played with Jerusalem, our neighbor who's about 5ish. She's adorable! Then got tea on the street, exchanged some money, and went to a team meeting. It was great to get out of the flat today and meet everyone. Oh, and another praise- my brother in law gave me his cell phone from Malaysia to try here. All it needed was a new sim card, well one of the girls had been given a free card from a parent at school and it worked in my phone. So, I didn't have to pay for a phone or a card- AND it came with some time on the card!!!! I was super excited, like jumping up and down. And then the internet was working when I got home- it hadn't been since I got here. Ok- it's late and I need a shower and sleep. Everyone needs to get skype (slype.com) so we can talk. Miss you all!!!!

i'm leaving tomorrow...

So, yesterday was a day full of goodbyes (which of course was hard to handle). My dad came and picked up my car (which is still for sale by the way ;-) ). Today Mom and I ran a ton of errands in town, glad to have that done! I still cannot believe that I am leaving tomorrow. This will be the longest I have ever been away from home, by far. I am so thankful for the internet though. I can't even begin to fathom how people traveled and went away from their families and friends before there was such a thing as the internet. The distance doesn't seem so great with the luxury of being able to email, skype (go to skype. com and download!!!!), blog, etc. Well, I still have some packing to do so I better go. The next post may not be for a while but I will keep in touch. Thank you to everyone that has supported me and this amazing opportunity I have been given :-) Until later... :-)

The beginning...

So, I am beginning this blog so that friends and family can keep up with me while I am out of the country. I will do my best to keep this updated. It is easier for me to have a blog than to post on both myspace and facebook. There will be a link to this blog on both though. That's all for now :-)