Model School

For the rest of our training, the education volunteers work at a "model school," that Peace Corps sets up in our training sites. It takes place at an actual high school, and sort of acts as a summer school. This week, we observed current volunteers and Cameroonian teachers teaching classes. Next week we start teaching our own classes. At my post, it turns out I'll be teaching the very beginning class of English along with the graduation class, who are preparing for the exam to get into college (the Bac). So, that's an extreme jump between classes but I'm excited about it because I get to experience the very extremes of teaching English in a Cameroonian high school. So I've asked that during model school, I teach these classes for the most part… that way I get a feel of what I'll be doing at post. I'm tremendously nervous. I've never taught before so I'm not sure exactly how this process will turn out. I think I'll like it though.

Yesterday, I fell in a big pile of mud. The rain was torrential and I had to run home in it because when I fell, I broke my umbrella. Once I made it home, I looked like a sewage rat… I even managed to get mud in my underwear. That takes skill, friends. I keep reminding myself of what Jack Black says in School of Rock, "You're not hard core unless you live hard core." Once I realized it wasn't going to get much worse, I was able to laugh at myself as I walked in the pouring rain. I made it home and thought, "Okay, now for a hot shower…" Oh wait, no. So I put some water boiling for a hot bucket bath instead. Yesterday was the first time I would have killed for a shower. So far, bucket baths haven't been so bad. I'm not even going to tell you how fun it was to wash the mud out of my clothes. It will just make you jealous.

I'm really looking forward to getting this training over so I can to post and be an actual volunteer. However, it seems I'm still in serious need of training because my French still sucks. I'm thinking it might be somewhat understandable after two years… but that's only with luck. Immersion helps but darn, it's difficult. Those crazy verb tenses and pronouns! I told my host mom, "Screw pronouns. I'm just going to use the actual names of everything." She didn't laugh… she said that was being lazy. As for me, I think pronouns are lazy. That's just my opinion though.

My host mom always asks me what I ate for lunch and I usually buy a plate of rice from a woman nearby school. My host mom says I eat a lot of rice. "Comes with being Cajun," I say. She's confused as to why we eat a lot of rice only in Louisiana. I told her it grows pretty well there but other than that, I don't know. She's really shocked that when she was looking at my photos, she saw a lot of pictures of me and my family eating crawfish. It's really funny because on top of that, she noticed on Dad's shirt and Elliott's shirt, there are pictures of crawfish. She laughed for about 5 minutes while I just tried to understand the humor there. Crawfish is by far better than anything I've tasted in Cameroon. Even better than spaghetti omelets, which has become my favorite Cameroonian food. Don't knock it till you try it. Some of the common foods here are: fish, fish, fish, eggs, peanuts, rice, spaghetti noodles, tomatoes, potatoes, magnoc (which is sort of like a potato… only disgusting,) red or black beans, plantains, bananas, corn, beignets, bread (though it's pretty hard) and other fruits. Corn and magnoc can be made into couscous or koki, or foufou, which is served with either a tomoto sauce, a plantain sauce, or a peanut sauce (my favorite).

I hope all is well! I'd love to hear from you. But send emails to: bnthib@gmail.com since hotmail acts stupid here. A tout a l'heure!