Term 3…

by Dom on September 1st, 2007

So I’m staring down another term. Form’s 2 and 4 and taking mock tests in preparation for the real ones at the end of the term. Only their term ends at a different time than the other two forms. My two forms. They end in like a month or less, I end just at Thanksgiving. I’m teaching them next year! I’m already a week ahead according to my lesson planning. Woohoo.

Gotta figure it all out. We have a Summer School fundraising dinner next month and unfortunately there aren’t really any holidays this term. However we are also having a small fundraising party in Mzuzu in November as well. Of course I’m also trying to work a trip to Mozambique in sometime and with no vacation days and so much with Summer School going on it’s going to be a bit of a feat, but I think I’ll manage. Gotta go diving with those whale sharks, ya know?

Overall this is going to be quite a busy term with not much time allowed for it. Vikuchitika, ya gotta do what you gotta do.

Oh yeah, Chris, you got a letter from a fellow who wants you correspond with you perpetually. You two had a nice chat indeed behind the shire bus lines campus! Good stuff.

If only there was a Meatwad party quote

by Dom on July 26th, 2007

So we had a party for all the newbies last night. They swore in yesterday. New health. Then they went to Dale’s for a lovely dinner I’m sure then they came back and we had beer. There were drinking games being played. I rounded up two others, Erin and Eric, and got the guitar and we just wandered around making up riffs and making fun of people it was good fun jamming and singing. I think we offended some, but I blame them, they shouldn’t be that easy…Alright well it was a good time overall.

World in Focus

by Dom on July 24th, 2007

So Haley sent me a link to this photo contest. It seems pretty cool. I thought I’d put the link here so everyone could atleast see some of these awesome pictures. World In Focus contest.

Now and Later(those were good)

by Dom on June 20th, 2007

Ramble on…So Dom’s bored. Yes this post didn’t begin with “so” but it almost did. I’m hanging out one more day before going back to site just to make sure. Today is my eat-normal-day-and-see-how-bad-it-messes-with-me day. Sounds like a good day doesn’t. I’m hoping so. I don’t know what’s for lunch yet but breakfast was pretty fantastic. I was given some ham, so I fried it with two eggs and I bought bagels from a resteraunt yesterday so I put all that on a bagel and did that twice to make two sandwiches. The first two eggs I got scared and decided I was too inept to fry them good so I omlettized them…bad choice. The second sandwich I regained my courage and went for it. They turned out fantastic, that nice popping white around the runny yellow middles. Mmmmm. Actually found a bit of cheese for the last part of the last sandwich, which of course escalated these from excellent, to legendary. Yes I said it. I’ll say it again. Legendary.

Anyway enough of that drivel. My house is coming along. I need to find some good plants. I really really want to plant some Vidalia onions. I also need some vines for the porch and I think I’m going to grow some loofa in this big back pot I have my spout bucket draining into to pose as a sink. I think I might also use my “sink” as a seed bed to transplant stuff out. Either that or toss in some herbs and do it up herb-garden-style. We’ll see. I can always buy another huge clay pot for 150MK(~$1) and do that in it. I also might get a rocking chair built still. I haven’t heard back from the people at Luwawa. I need to go down there and talk to them, I just don’t know when I’ll make it.

So school wise, I’m thinking of trying to do like a monthly big science experiment one weekend. Purely voluntary, keep it fun and maybe even applicable. I might try to get Yorgos involved to help me explain the science and then we could do it twice, once at my place and then at his. A bit too busy right now to really get that started though, so it might have to wait until next year. I don’t really know what experiments I’d do either. I can picture 3L coke bottles flying into the air, but I don’t know how I’d make them do that or where I’d get these bottles from. So who knows.

General Good Times.

by Dom on May 27th, 2007

So had to come in to lilongwe. Had to do it, so I did. There were “summer school” meetings, or Camp Sky, as it’s being called. It’s this “secondary project” where we invite kids from our schools to come to like a crazy peace corps volunteer run “school” that’s only like a week and a half long where we do harder stuff than normal and offer interesting electives, like film study and star gazing. woohoo. Anyway, I’m in charge of picking where to do it at. Good times in general but nothing real specific.

There was also a “Iron Chef” competition. It was held at Dale’s. Basically we had like 4 groups with a secret ingredient of honey make a ton of food, and then we hang out. Food was good, and it was definitely fun. Ahh peace corps…

Peace Corps made me sign some paper that basically said I had to like my new site or decide to go home. I was “terribly vexed” about that. But it’s cool because I do like it. No worries. I bought this curio table that has a chess board on one side and a bao board on the other, so when I have guests we have something to do other than wait to watch the sunset. I did trade one of my pairs of camo shorts for the pieces to the chess set, but I still have another pair, and the other pair fits better so it’s all good.

Back to site tomorrow, gotta get my teach on.

The good times

by Dom on April 24th, 2007

Things these past weeks have been pretty cool. Probably the best time I’ve had in this country. It began with the wardrobe malfunction during the bike training in dedza. Stupid crappy abercrombie and fitch jeans. Then, on into IST, down to blantyre and mulanje, back up through lilongwe and on to nkhata bay to stay at mayoka village on the lake. That place was awesome, right on the water, awesome atmosphere, good food, cool people, and just all around real laid back. Sergio came with me and we met some others volunteers there. Ended up meeting a lot of real cool people too, some gap year british folk, some irish folk, two sweedish girls, a peruvian and another dude from LA. All of them, save the brit’s, got a minibus with sergio and are headed north (to alaska, goin’ north the rush is on). He should have a good time, I’m sure it’s the trip of a life time. It was pretty crazy to meet people with zero affiliation with the US. It was great though, it really gives a new perspective on everything.

Also, in the midst of a site-change process. I just don’t like my site and it makes me feel ill when I realize it’s time to go back. The same feeling I used to have when I realized I had to do dynamics homework. Not good. Also, I’m going to try a toned down version of “the book” the one for teaching reference, not “the book” for language reference, gunda icho. The latter has actually come along quite nicely. The former however has a long way to go. I think it will be good though. I’m suppose to get a call tomorrow from Dora and we can talk some more, she called me today and we had some discussions but it was more about how my expectations weren’t going to be met, as usual. So hopefully these talks will be relatively fruitful tomorrow.

It’s sad to have chris gone and sergio re-gone, but when I think about the site change and the book, I get a little excited and that’s something that hasn’t happened in, oh say, 7 months. And I know sergio’s going to have a good time, and chris has to be loving it, literally.

Lastly, I’m over 6 months out of date on the music scene, but the eagles of death metal, ok go, incubus, gnarls barkley, and hellogoodbye are still rockin’. Do it.

P.S. Elin, that paper you wrote the email address of that icelandic slaughterhouse on got all smeared in my wet pocket and now it’s un-readable, I’m retarded I know. Anyway, could you leave me that email address again if you have it? tak(?)

New pictures!

by Dom on April 18th, 2007

Yeah, got some pictures up. Not totally the best, but you get the idea. That’s Yorgos cooking too, not me. Be satiated

Guitars and bikes

by Dom on April 4th, 2007

So my clock seems to be about 45 minutes fast. I doubt I’ll get the the time and motivate to fix it but who knows. We’ll see.
Right now I’m waiting (as usual) to talk to admin to find out when I go south for the training. Hopefully it will be soon. Well relatively soon. I would like to get breakfast. Yesterday I adjusted 25 bikes. It was pretty amazing the poor condition of assemblage they were in before. It took the better part of 5 hours and I got it down to about 12 minutes a bike, with test ride. Yeah. Fortunately all the pointless crap was done, like packaging removed, etc. It was pretty great too, I only had a travel tool kit and one wrench that luckily fit the pedals to do it all. Obnoxious. Unfortunately there was no 8mm allen to be found so I couldn’t check the crank bolts. I guess we’ll just have to trust Trek on that one. We’ll see.

I also put some new strings on my guitar, a tansen of some nature. Now it sings beautifully, if only I could play that well. Anyway, it’s time for breakfast.

I’m still around, I’m still around

by Dom on April 3rd, 2007

Baby, I’m still around… - Second shift I think? So yeah, here I am in Malawi. Still here, for a little longer atleast. I’ve had to come to grips with the fact that we aren’t here to try to come up with creative solutions to problems we see. We’re here to teach. And teaching is what doesn’t really interest me. So that is the dilema. I was told to think of this more as “study abroad for adults” and that seems to sum things up nicely. However having this greater understanding doesn’t make it satisfy me more. So yeah, we’ll see come what may.

Anyway, I’m here now using the free internet(sweet) and I’m off to do the bike training for the new environment group tomorrow. So that should be cool. Then we have our in-service training, then it’s off for a little touristy trip of the country. So I’ll be on here more often in the coming weeks.

Getting here was a pain. I went to Yorgos’ to try to cut the trip in half, but from there I only made it to Gretchen’s before it got to late to continue, so I had to call here up and stop there. Thankfully all went smoothly with that or I really would have been screwed.

So that’s all for now. I just got in and I’m a little tired and 2 days of traveling has caused me to need a bath and maybe a beer or two.

In the midst

by Dom on March 1st, 2007

So things didn’t go well with the country director. I’m amazingly dissapointed. I still have one more meeting with the education APCD but I may be seeing you guys sooner than later.