Variations of the name "Zoe":

-Zooey

-Z

-Zoo

-Joey

-Joe

But never Zoe, hahaha!

The flies may drive me mad one of these days. They're not normal flies. They're giant, mutant ultra-pests. And they're everywhere. I was expecting mosquitoes, which don't seem to be so prevalent, so I suppose the flies are better.

What else has been happening....

Went to a Christian wedding, which was probably the most hilarious thing ever. Gold lame abound, and Jesus wore a lei. I did, however, get to eat ice cream at the reception, which made terrible organist and choir and two hour ceremony worth it.

I received the "time table" of classes I will be teaching--and it's quite a full schedule.

English: 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th grades

Science: 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th grades

My music class will be taught to 7th, 8th, 9th classes (about 100 kids!) as a two-hour Powerpoint presentation once a week. I'm also to give a presentation on Oregon at some point, so please send me suggestions!!

I'm going to put together a project organizing data from the children and babies with HIV. This is one of the saddest things about being here. There are three small babies here right now with HIV. I was talking to the Indian doctor that visits the campus twice a week, and he told me that, even with the drugs available today, these babies only have about a 50% chance of making it to adulthood.

The method of education here is not so great. Everything is taught by rote, and the state-wide tests administered come directly from these texts. None of the children learn to think critically and answer questions themselves, as they are simply copying the answer that the teacher writes. I attempted to have 13-year-olds write full sentences to answer simple reading comprehension questions. It was somewhat of a disaster.... I'm not sure what I'm going to do, but I'll have to figure out some hybrid method. The textbooks are another problem. Every single page of the English textbooks has several grammar mistakes. They're probably not worse than those mistakes that an at American would make when writing, but....for a textbook this really isn't acceptable. But I must work with what I have!

I am so desperate for exercise that I am playing football (soccer) with the boys. The 9 and 10 year boys with whom I play are way, way better than me, and I think they just let me pretend to play because they want to see the awkward, tall white girl make a fool out of herself...but I'm okay with this.

I am hard at work putting together a Photobucket album, such that people can see my photos more easily. It's taking forever to upload, but I will post the link when it's done!