New Year, New Resolutions

It’s hard to believe it’s 2013 already! I am happy to say that I accomplished half of my New Year’s resolutions from last year! I’m hoping to go for all of them this year so we’ll see how it goes. This year already has been different than 2012…I’m in Africa killing unknown bugs every night in my house. I never thought I would be happy to just have a normal looking spider in the bathroom to kill rather than some freaky mutant insect. I’ve been trying to get better with my fear of insects, bugs and anything “creepy crawly”…I like to think I’ve made some improvements but when I feel a bug crawling on me I still freak out a tad bit.

**On the plus side the past 3 nights in a row we haven’t had our nightly part spider/part scorpion/part very weird looking insect in our house. We had been having these things running around our house every night and it took an extreme amount of bug spray to finally slow them enough to sweep them out of the house. Knock on wood that they stay out of our house for the time being!

I wish I could tell you how productive I have been during the New Year or all the new projects I’ve started but I can’t. Everyday I go over to the school’s office and ask the same questions—“when do classes start? Do you know the class schedule?” Unfortunately I have yet to truly get an answer to this. I think I have the school start date down to sometime in early February (so at least there is some time to plan lessons). I still don’t know what grades I’m teaching or the curriculum for the English and Computer classes. I’m hoping to get that sometime this week so I can be productive and start planning lessons.

The most productive things I’ve done so far are make new resolutions for 2013, bake oatmeal & sugar cookies (the oatmeal one’s actually tasted like cookies whereas the sugar cookies tasted a little odd), and have been reading a lot to fill my days. Usually the most exciting part of my day is sitting on my front porch coloring and talking with the 4 year old living a few houses down. I wish I had more exciting things to share with you about life in Nacuxa but the school is eerily quiet with all the students gone. (It reminds me of Jewell on the weekends. But Liberty at least had a 24 hour Wal-Mart and sonic) :) Hopefully in my next post I’ll have more exciting news to share!

My goals for this week (so I can be more productive!):

•  Figure out the curriculum for English & Computer class and write the first few lessons
• Sit outside once a day and talk in Portuguese to my neighbors
• Start reading the one book I have that’s in Portuguese (The Princess Diaries…yes I know how lame that sounds but the sad fact is that book will probably still be a little challenging since it’s in Portuguese)
• Figure out a way to make a closet so bugs don’t get in my clothes
• Make cinnamon toast and more coffee cake!

As I was looking through my quotes to find one to share with you I came across this quote. I remember reading it in high school and thinking how truly blessed I was for everything.

As I read it now it could not be truer and make me feel even more blessed than the first time I read it. I’ll admit there are days when I stop and think about how hard it is being away from my friends and family back home and how easy it would be to go home and live with all the luxuries of life in the U.S. (washing clothes in a machine, gong out to eat, driving a car, having running water (that is clean) and electricity 24/7). But then I’m reminded of why I chose to join the Peace Corps. I’m blessed by having some amazing nuns who want to just sit on my porch and talk, students who are eager to learn, kids who would be happy just coloring with me all day (and who don’t laugh at my terrible Portuguese)…and that in itself makes up for the days when I feel homesick and like I’m not doing enough. I know I can’t change the world in 2 years…but I hope I can at least inspire students to “dream big” (as Mr. Young would say) :) and work hard for what they want.