School's Out!

Since I last wrote, I taught math and health (got some interesting questions about condoms from the students who are roughly my age), visited Brian for his birthday (and ate delicious cake from a betty crocker/pilsbury/something like that mix his family sent in a bday package), went on a few BEAUTIFUL hikes, found out my school had moved up exams by two weeks with 3 days of class left before the exams started (they translate the most inane things for me when I'm in a meeting and can follow the gist of the kiswahili, but when I'm apparently out of the room for an announcement that's important nobody bothers to tell me), did lots of invigilating, and rearranged the furniture in my house. It's been nice! Oh, I also found a great clothes maker
in my village -- she made me a skirt that's now by far my favorite :) I'll have to post pictures of my tanzanian outfits...

So, here's some more detail if you're still interested:
I accidentally taught some things that got moved to the Physics syllabus last year, but considering they didn't seem to know it before I taught it, it didn't really bother me that I helped them learn another subject. I taught some basic HIV/AIDs stuff and explained why condoms, when used correctly, protect against HIV/AIDs. After a few hesitant questions they started flowing, and here are a few highlights: how long does a condom last? (not meaning expiration date, but rather how long sexual intercourse can last before the condom breaks.) Don't condoms sometimes have organisms/bacteria/viruses inside the package and so you can get HIV from using it? Can the speed of intercourse break the condom? Some people use condoms and still get HIV, so why bother using them? Is it better to use more than one condom? (michael scott, anyone?) miss julie, do you personally think that using a condom changes the experience? (i declined to answer and was, for the first time, EXTREMELY glad for the lack of cross-cultural understanding so that they didn't know what my bright red face meant.) And of course, many of these questions were asked in English that I didn't understand the first time, so the students had to ask it in multiple ways or in kiswahili or have another student explain the question in a different way. I want to do condom demonstrations separately with the male and female students, but I don't want to do it for the males and I'm a bit embarrassed to ask a male teacher to help because of cultural issues; I'm hoping a male PCV will happen to visit soon and agree to help :)
The hikes I did were down by Brian's site, and they were wonderful! Not too hard and gorgeous views -- right down my alley! We cooked delicious food with the other friends who showed up, had a few beers and some of Brian's latest homemade wine concoction, and thoroughly enjoyed each other's company. The cake mix and frosting from a can, straight from MN, were incredible and such a treat! And I got a few people hooked on a delicious Filipino dessert made of avocadoes, bananas and milk -- thanks geia! I also had a very Tanzanian experience, when the bus back to my village didn't show up so I was stranded at Brian's for an extra day. And then when I got back, all of my male students had been sent to the next village over to collect firewood for the day. And this was when I found out I had 3 days of classes before exams began, but only 1 day when I was scheduled to teach. Didn't turn out to be a huge problem, though, because a number of teachers don't go to the classrooms when they are assigned to teach so I was able to take other teachers' periods for myself. Then we had a week of terminal exams (can you imagine having 2 3hour exams 5 days straight from 8th-11th grade??), so I invigilated (aka proctored) all week. It gets pretty boring, but I wrote some letters and read some newsweeks, as well as caught students cheating, of course. Each exam is allotted 3 hours, but teachers don't always write their exam for that amount of time plus students don't always take the entire time allotted, so I usually only stood in a classroom for 1.5-2.5 hours for each exam. And a friend visited one day so I got out of invigilating because I had a guest! The students were really cute as they were leaving school to go home -- there was that general feeling of giddiness after finals are over, everyone was smiling, and they all said goodbye and wished me a good break; it was a good day! Then I graded all my exams (supposedly I have 165 students but I only got 136 midterm exams...) and figured out grades -- yay for excel! I'm going to try to introduce figuring out grades with excel, because currently it's all done by hand. Never thought I'd use carbon paper outside of chem lab, but I use it here to make copies a lot -- like for report cards, when we keep one on file and mail one to parents, and for problem sets I make for my students...lots of fun. So without teaching I've been more relaxed, read a few books, wrote a few letters, and have planned out the beginning of next term. But I'm quite ready for my break to really begin and for my visitors to get here!
I'm going to try to post some pictures on facebook and/or here, so check them out!