Still too hot

Yesterday night it rained. I slept through it, but the ground was wetin the morning and the humidity and pressure that had been building has been dissipated. Yesterday was the brightest and hottest its been since we arrived. It seems like we havke been here for a long time now, even though it has only been a week that flashed by at the time. The last volunteer arrived yesterday. I geuss I ought to tell you about the other people wo are here wth me. There are six of us; no seven now. There are 5 Brits, and two Americans. I met Cerian and Alex(andra) on the plane on the way here – Cerian is a nurse from Bristol and Alex was working in the marketing section of Sony-BMG until she took voluntary redundancy. Robert came on a different flight on the same day as us; he is the same age as me, and taking a gap year before going to do Economics at uni. Eidligh (sp probably wrong) arrived yesterday - shes a student studying french and film studiers. For part of a years experience she taught English in France for a term, making her the only one with any experience. Shane and Kate came totgetehr on the same flight as me, but we didn’t find them. Shane is a graphic designer and bran organization person – he sorts out the entire image of a company from the ground up, and Kate is a ‘childrens product developer’ (ie toymaker) from California. We are all getting on fine, we managed to share a bar bill without any arguments (for a week between 6 it came to 20 pounds each). We have had some differences on politics, but nothing that we can’t agree to disagree.

Im going to be teaching in Junior Secondary - which is the equivalent of the fisrt two years of Senior school in the UK or Junior High in the states. I going to be teahing maths science and doing one on one reading classes. I know some of the children allready - in particluar a teenager called Robert - hes 14/15/16, no one know exactly what. He spends a lot of time with the volunteers when they are there, and his spoken english is excelent as a result. He and a coupel of his friends help us at every opertunity, which can be a bit embarassing - you feel that you are taking advantage. there have been a couple of things with money where we have had to tread a bit of a knife edge as far as offending people goes. The hardest was trying to get Ester - the Ghanain who is looking after us - to even allow us to pay her for doing some washing. She would only take about a thrid of the fair money for it - i gave her a good amount and she stuffed most of it in my hand an hurried off before I could respond. Its lovely, but we all feel guilty because she works so hard and is also a volunteer.

Rob Alex Ceri and I got out first taste of teaching on friday. We went to observe some lessons and were told that two teachers weren't there, could we take thier classe. Anarchy ensued. Me and Rob ended up with KG1 - 5y/os plus, and Alex and Ceri ended up with the Nursery calss, which was a lot harder. The teacher for the nursersy isn't any good and spends a lot of time sleeping(!) so her class tend to run riot a lot. They had a hard time, but we all gained experience. The best tactic for keeping order is bribery simply because we aren't prepared to go to the same lengthgs as the Ghanains go for punishment. Giving out stickers etc etc as rewards shuts the kids up much quicker than trying to shout them into submison.

Now its time to go. Im just going to add a thankyou for whoever it was that recomended the art of zen and motercycle maintenance to me - its a great read so far. Very interesting, and suprisingly conected to some of the convestation topics that come up over the3 dinner table. I ought also to apologise for the state of my typing - im in a hurry so I don't have time to correct my rushed mistakes.