new head and other parts

by Dom on February 16th, 2008

so the shift key doesn’t work here. it’s obnoxious. i got a new headmaster. my old one was awesome but got transfered to a school that has just started. so i got some new guy. doesn’t really seem to know whats going on. i gotta say it’s really decreased my dedication to the school but it’s harder just not having someone that’s easy to ask questions to about culture or just the best carpenter. the deputy headmaster left to, so we’re a teacher shorter than we were. i think we’re at 6 with me. not too many. oh well.

did the science experiment thing at my school. had over 100 students and a few teachers there. it was pretty awesome. gonna try it again next week at yorgos’ site. he’s got a lot bigger school so things will be a bit different. i’m happy with how it’s turned out though.

i think some other things have gone down but i just don’t really remember them right now. my students are kind of pissing me off with how little effort they seem to give compounded with how little they seem to be paying attention in class too. i’ll go through a whole problem explaining it. one that i gave for homework - that no one did. a kid will say ‘i don’t understand any of it, can you just repeat it?’ wastes a whole class cause they can’t put effort forward. this of course also decreases my dedication. whatever.

just got back from a night at the lake though. it was needed. a nice relaxing party and swim. great weather too; we’re in a drought right now. the rains have stopped for a couple of weeks. might try to see this ex-pat today too who has a shop and keeps a lot of potentially useful trash. she said we could rummage through it to see if we needed any of it for the experiments.

Peace Corps

by Dom on February 16th, 2008

So I was sitting at site the other day and I came up with what I thought was a pretty good analogy for what peace corps service has been like so far.

1. Find a spice bottle
2. Take the lid off the spice bottle
3. Find a chair in a corner
4. Sit in said chair for an hour with the spice lid
5. Get up and tell people you made the world better

Now I don’t think it’s 100% accurate, as in if you do the peace corps you probably actually do help the world. Sitting in a chair won’t, unless your homicidal. However the whole feeling of boredom, what am I doing, why am I doing this is probably pretty similar. It’s a very unsatisfying feeling that is hard to overcome. And then once you do overcome it, you almost wonder if you’re even better off now? Is it better that you don’t mind boredom, or that you’ve become satisfied with being unsatisfied? I guess that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case, you could get motivated and start projects and stuff but I think for a lot of us, maybe most of us, that just isn’t how we work. I personally hate boredom. It seems like the anti-life to me. Not death, boredom. Living death. But maybe you don’t get used to the boredom maybe you don’t get used to being unsatisfied but start to really notice all the little things that seemed inconsequential. Maybe even start to appreciate them, so much so that they alone can satisfy you.

I wrote a short essay, at dillon’s half suggestion, about the most reliable positive thing I see us doing here, which is living with locals treating them as equals. That and how I think all aid should pull out for a while. It just seems like the people here believe me to be inherently better than them because I’m American. Which is absurd.It can be fun to tell them how wrong they are sometimes, but othertimes, most times, it’s just tiresome. But it’s life. I meant to bring the essay but I forgot, maybe next time. Everythings life. It’s alwayslife, just life. If you’re here or there, the excitement is likeacceleration. It’s only in the beginning and then wears off. (that’s afantastic analogy).

as an ammendment, after some discussion with yorgos it was decided maybe a full pull out wouldn’t be the best, but still necessary to a certain degree. More later.