A long exhausting day
Woke up and went to hit the light switch. It does nothing...great. Granted the electricity situation has VASTLY improved from when I first got here, but recently we've been loosing power in the mornings, only to have it (thank you electricity gods) restored in the afternoon. No electricity means I can't work on my end of service reports for Peace Corps, nor can I mail the shirts I've been meaning to mail for months (mail here, like in the States, is done electronically).

Since I don't know how long this power outage is going to last, I take out the cookie dough I made a couple days ago. One of my favorite people here, a 6 year old has been harassing me for like a month to make him chocolate chip cookies. A couple days ago, with the help of a 3 year old (hint, never try to make cookies on your front stoop with a three year old...it's just a bad idea) and his 19 year old cousin, we made cookie dough, which I was too lazy to bake (it takes time, and you have to watch it). So with the power out, I decide that the cookie dough needs to be made. Spend the morning doing that, and reading a book.

Get to school, teach. I try a new approach with my students where I speak in a low, subdued voice, and refuse to talk when they are talking. It works okay. My last class is obnoxious as usual. However, since there's a meeting for all the home room teachers (which I am not one) like half of the kids don't show up. This is unacceptable, as I told one of the students in the class that I was going to teach, and she told them all. I try to be tough with them, but it's just difficult.

As I'm walking home I stop to talk to one of my students mom's. He wasn't exceptionally bad, but she likes to know things...later I regret it for a while. She tells me (the truth): I need to get a better hold on the class and if students are misbehaving, I need to throw them out. The problem today was the class only had like 20 students and of those, like 10-15 were misbehaving. So what am I going to do? Throw the whole class out? Anyway it made me feel incompetent (although kinda rightfully so). I'm just sooo tired of fighting with the students, for their respect.

I remember that I was in classes where we were really, really mean to two teachers: Ms. Moomaw, for chemistry in 11th grade, and Mr. Rood for math in 8th. I have this theory that I'm doing two years of penance for my behavior in those classes: suffering the other side of the coin.

So I'm walking home and one of my 14 year old, 9th grade students tells me in English a couple vulgar things that he'd like to do to me. My first impulse was to beat some sense into his head, but I can't due to physical limitations. My second impulse was to get my friend and have him do it for me, but that wasn't a realistic option either. So I went to his house and told his maid, who said he'd tell his grandma when she got home.

I went home, cried a bit, had lunch, and watched a DVD (Music and Lyrics, which is an okay film) while feeling bad. I decided I owed the first kid's parents an apology: he wasn't being exceptionally bad, so there was no need to tell on him. When I went into town to go shopping I talked with his mother, apologized, but she said that I should come to her with whatever small things, so they don't grow. I felt infinitely better.

I called a couple people about issues I've been having with the newsletter (I'm the "administrator") for it, got frustrated, but ultimately worked towards a solution.

Needless to say, the day up till that point was pretty emotionally draining, in a way that's kinda difficult to describe, and which I like to think is unique to my time in Peace Corps (but I could be making the picture overly rosy). I realized that I desperately needed to laugh, to have some fun, so I decided to have a Pretty In Pink night, where I'm make themed food and would watch the movie. I went shopping for the food in town and came home.

I made a festa-flavored (festa=party) cake from a mix, and added some read food coloring to make it turn pink. As that was cooling, I sat on my front porch reading.

While I was reading, the foul-mouthed kid's grandmother came over to apologize. She told me more about herself and I was left a little in awe. She'd raised 8 kids as a single mother, she was a teacher and for the past 20 odd years has been a nurse. Some of her children are in Europe, and their occupations range from medical surgeon to engineer to cleaner. Now she's been left to raise the foul mouthed kid, whose parents are in Europe. She explained that he's going through a phase (the word in Krioulu is the same as in English), and I told her I agreed; that I was especially disappointed in her grandson because he is so intelligent and charismatic and has so much potential. One of the problems I have is that I joke with the students and am friendly with them outside of class. However I do work hard to draw a line between "teacher" (professional) and "my name" (personal) and that I have no problem with the kids joking with me outside of class. However, I told her that what he said was not acceptable to say to any woman, be it friend or professional colleague. She agreed. I also told her that I was only going to speak with her grandson during class: not outside of school. Anyway, it was very nice of her to come by.

So she left, I started just relaxing and hanging out. I started acting like a 3 year old, just to amuse myself and make myself laugh, because that was what I desperately needed at the moment. At one point, I was singing Raffi songs and was honestly disappointed that I didn't know more lyrics. Another point found me kinda tap dancing in the water that collects in the bathroom after a shower (every shower floods my bathroom a bit), laughing the whole time. Accents were invoked. This being able to laugh at myself, to make an idiot of myself in the comfort of my own home, is something I've developed here and now I don't know how I ever lived without it. To quote Sherryl Crow "If it makes you happy, it can't be that bad." Acting like an idiot sometimes makes me happy, so it's not that bad.

My roommate came home and we made dinner. She'd had a bad day too, which was unfortunate on a variety of levels, including the fact that I was in my 3-year-old ish laugh at anything phase when she got home and wanted someone to seriously talk with. I did my best to put on a serious face (quite effectively). Luckily the serious part only lasted a part of the night. We made a stirfry (with tomatoes, which are kinda like pink), and some excellent, Chinese-restaurant quality white rice. And to top it all off, we had pink champagne. Well, technically it was 400 escudo (~$6) bottle of "white wine with gas" but by adding just a touch of grenadine and stirring, each glass became a glass of pink champagne. I'd forgotten that I'd leant out Pretty in Pink, so it was just a pink food night. Instead we watched "Somewhere, Tomorrow" an early Sarah Jessica Parker movie that my roommate's dad had sent over in a 25 film DVD superpack. (There are so many amazing films in it, including "BMX Bandits" with Nicole Kidman when her hair was in ringlets and she spoke Australian, and John Travolta's seminal "The Boy in the Bubble")

Oh and it turns out that festa-cake really does just taste like a pancake.

A post script written on April 26th I passed the foul-mouth kid in the road. I didn't look at him, but as I passed him, he said something insulting, in English, about my mother.

Another postscript written April 27th: A friend is going to talk with the foul-mouthed kid in the culturally appropriate way. I'm still not going to talk with the kid, but hopefully some sense will get into his head.