One post from each of us today

From Him:

Okay, so while she’s written some fairly direct stuff about what we’ve been doing, I’ve been pretty vague in my posts. Random thoughts, notes from the front, that sort of thing. To be honest, there hasn’t been that much to write about since we’ve gotten to site (coming up on a month now). We’ve been running a summer program for the secondary school students (basically grades 7-11) for the last few weeks, and the final week of it is this coming one; that way the students get one week off before school starts back up.

The secondary school, which is where I’ll be working once the school year starts, has just under 200 students, and we’ve had a summer attendance of about 50-60. She teaches literacy-related stuff, and I’m doing “IT” – while it’s referred to as Information Technology, which sounds sexy and exciting, it’s basically typing and mastery of Windows and Microsoft Office. She can tell you in her entry what exactly literacy is.

So, basically, with me the students have been figuring out why they bump a button and ALL THE LETTERS COME OUT AS CAPITALS, the difference between delete and backspace, the magical Shift button, etc. Lately, we’ve gotten into even wilder things – Cut, Copy, and Paste, and so forth. I know, I know – it’s nuts. Who knew that I could not only teaching high school Spanish, but IT as well?

How do I get myself into these things?

Moving on from our professional lives, things have been interesting these last two weeks for us personally and socially. We’ve barely had to cook a single dinner for ourselves. Last Friday, we visited the next village over, being toured around by two friends of ours that live in our village and know the area. As we were going about on our BRAND NEW BIKES (which have already broken in various places a grand total of 5 times, in 2 weeks), we came down off a bridge and I was waved over by some guys at a rum shop.

Now, for the males serving here, this will be a common occurrence. There are little shops on the roadside, everywhere, and they sell snacks and bike tires and random things. They also often sell beer, rum, and vodka. They’re called Rum Shops, and basically about 5-15 men will be sitting and standing around, at any time of day, drinking. When the white boy goes by, just trying to live his life, he will be waved over and invited to “Troe a shot” (throw a shot). Now, refusing is generally okay, but you also don’t want to be rude. You need to be careful though, because Troeing a Shot can become killing two bottles of vodka at around noon on a Wednesday. So Friday we’re being shown the next town, and some guys wave me over. Well, it’s not like I’m off to work, or meet some official, so I go over, say hi, troe a shot (or two).

So, next thing, I’m invited (with She [remember: the only feminine pronoun is She]) to a guy’s house for dinner Saturday. Then, on the way back from the tour, we stop at some friend or other of our tour guides, and bing bang boom, dinner Wednesday was taken care of. We visited a Mandir (Hindu church) Sunday, and afterwards were invited by some new friends we made just then to some function or other, and bam, dinner Sunday was given to us. Monday we ate some Hassa, some fish we were given by the family that fed us Saturday; Tuesday we ate at She [not Her; SHE] counterpart (counterpart = professional associate on site, set up through our organization). Wednesday, I mentioned; and so the week proceeds, through Saturday, when we attended a “Jandi”, a Hindu thanksgiving. And we’re visiting new churches every Sunday as we get invited (we’re booked up for the next 3 weeks, at least), and every time we visit a new place, we get more invitations.

We were told early on that we would basically be celebrities. We’re obviously foreign (aka, White); not just any foreigners, but from the U.S., which is where many of the people here wish to end up; and we’re volunteers, helping out the community and giving up time out of our lives, giving up family and friends and money, to be here. So there’s general all-around positive feeling toward us. Plus, being blindingly white, people can spot us from WAY out, so lots of times we meet new people, but they’ve already seen us around – doing our morning run, shopping in the market, whatever. And we’re given more fruit than we know what to do with.

So, yeah. That celebrity thing was no joke. It will definitely be weird when we return to the states and find a new home – everyone won’t be fawning over us, kids won’t be staring, we won’t get dinner invitations for every day of the week. I mean, we were triple-booked this last Sunday; if we’d had enough hours in the day, we could have done a couple weddings along with the church service and lunch we attended.