It's been a while

Life has been busy. I have been slowly learning the lessons that students teach their teachers across the world. I have had much to do and a seemingly shrinking amount of time to do everything (my schedule fills up quickly). I haven't had as much time as I would have liked for free time, for things like soccer and pleasure reading...

*Note the 5 uses of the Perfect tense in the last paragraph. And, no, it's not exactly true. I have had more free time over the past week than I had had during the entire 6 weeks before. Haha...*

So, yes, my students not only read books but we get to have exciting grammar lessons as topics ranging from relative pronouns, to dependent clauses, to the Perfect tense. As much as I pretend to love grammar during class, the reality is that I never liked it much. But smile I do every day that we are fortunate enough to work on gerunds, prepositional phrases, and the differences countable and non-countable nouns. Fun stuff.

Anyway, in other news, the trash derby continues. Our zone of control has expanded and we are getting some tangible support from the local government and residents. As you know, we painted our own sign on the highway (Pa jete fatra la), but we saw some police officers this past week painting their own sign on the 10 foot high concrete fall affirming that there should be no dumping in this area. Encouraging, certainly.

An important item to note. Haiti turns youthful U.S. Americans into chocolate fiends. The arrival of large quantities of chocolate the other week lead to a 30 hour feeding frenzy where copious amounts of candy were consumed by the 9 volunteers here. Scary? Perhaps. But so so delicious.

In related news (not exactly), my personal bucket (a bucket I use for laundry, showering, mopping, etc...) was seen being used as a storage container for the biweekly slaughtering of a bull (to provide meat for all the students). Some things you just have to let go in life...

So, the first quarter of school ended last week with an entire week of exams. The number of exams depends on the grade, but the oldest students (the Philo students) took 11-12 exams in four days. Pretty intense indeed.

The students went home after the last exam finished Thursday, and since Monday was a national holiday, we had a four day weekend. I was catching a cold at the beginning of the weekend and I did what I do best, I attacked it with sleep. I napped from 2:45 (the kids left at 2:00) until 6, ate dinner, read for a bit, then went to bed at 9 and didn't wake up until 6:45 (pretty late for Haiti, the latest I have slept in over the last three months is 7:15). Anyway, when I woke up my cold was gone! I guess sleeping 13 of 16 hours did the trick.

So, I finally broke down during exam week and played basketball with the Philo students. They play basketball every day and I was initially hesitant to play with them. I had no real concrete reason, I guess at some level I didn't want to completely destroy the teacher-student barrier. Anyway, I joined two other members of the Haitian staff and we played all challengers, winning each time. Being the old men that we are, we called it quits after 3 games. But I'm certainly looking forward to next time.

This past weekend was exciting for a number of reasons.

First, it was a four-day weekend, our longest break since school began.

Second, it was Halloween. We (the volunteers and the Haitian staff) had a "party" across the street at the home of the president of the project. Watching the school principle dress up at Nietzsche just might have been the highlight of my evening. Myself? I choose to dress stylishly as Route National 3, the road we have been cleaning for over a month now. With a sash of garbage, dirty work jeans, a ripped CBA t-shirt (it lives!), and a sign taped to me saying, "Pa Jete Fatra La," or "No littering here." Good times.



The other adventure of the weekend was working at the Nuncio's (the diplomatic representative of the Vatican) residency on Saturday. A group of the volunteers and the Haitian staff traveled here and we helped with his landscaping the entire day, breaking for a picnic lunch, mass, and drinks/discussion after mass. Overall, a pretty amazing day. We were mainly clearing brush, but I took great joy in vanquishing trees with my scimitar-shaped machete. As I learned on Saturday, using machetes for hours and hours will leave you with what can only be called a "machete grip." This is the tired sensation felt in your hands when you have clutching a machete for dear life for hours as you hack away at brush and trees. Anyway, the residency was at the top of hill and we enjoyed a gorgeous view of the city of Port-au-Prince as well as the bay and the surrounding mountains. Beautiful. The Nuncio was an impressive man, originally from the Philippines, he speaks fluently 5-6 languages. The diplomatic language of the Vatican is French, he submits his reports in Italian, and he spoke English like a Native speaker. And he quietly mentioned that his native tongue is a local language in the Philippines...

Ah, book update. I finished The Idiot, Started and finished the Omnivore's Dilemma, and the Dew Breaker. I've now started the Book Thief (which is quite excellent) and I'm about to start The Things They Carried. I finally had this brilliant idea to have the person I'm tutoring read books that I've always wanted to read but never have. This way, I'm helping someone and checking books off my "to read list." Oh, and I'm going to be starting Life of Pi soon.

So many books, so little time...

Peace.