IST!

We are now at the five-month mark and just finished with our In-Service Training! Wow. Tomorrow we all go to the airport to greet a new crew of Environment Volunteers. Very exciting.

IST was a great time! It was really nice to see our whole group; there were a couple I hadn't seen since early December. And I was reminded of all the amazing things that people are already doing -- five months in and Melissa's got her women's group sewing purses to sell for school fees, Elisabeth's working with a youth group, Will's got grand designs on the World Bank, the Teacher Development Facilitators have held a couple workshops, and so on. On a more mean-spirited note, it was good remember how much worse some other people have it. Jen and Kris, our awesome and hilarious married couple, have over a hundred kids in one classroom for both Form 1 and Form 2. Sheesh! And Jerrod and Haakon are both hours from the main road and thus any kind of reliable communication or transportation. But, the stalwarts they are, all mentioned above are dealing with these situations with way better attitudes than I would have. 52 in one class is more than enough for me.

IST did make me a little nervous about secondary projects, though. The time has come to really get going with those, and I'm still at a bit of a loss for what to do. But! Meantime, I've got plenty of teaching to keep me busy, and now our Education group is starting to prepare for Camp Sky, a two-week academic camp for high-achieving kids that PC Education Volunteers put up every year. I'm in charge of extra-curriculars, which means there will be a lot of AWESOME camp games, and a couple of workshops about nutrition, income-generating activities, and the like. I'm excited about it -- it will definitely be a lot of work, but I think it'll be great to show these kids that they can be part of an intellectual community, and that if they work hard, they can get somewhere. They're all coming from PCVs' sites, which means that probably one or two students from their villages pass the MSCE each year (the MSCE is the national exam that you have to pass if you want to go to university, go into civil service, or anything other than be a farmer, essentially). So we're going to have lots of professional Malawians come speak, and lots of activities, assuming all comes together by August. Gah.

Since my last post, we've had exams, which was its own insanity. We all give hand-written exams to one teacher, and then he types them on a typewriter and takes them to Khwawa (Will's site) to have them put through a duplicating machine. It's a gigantic mess and I now bow down to anyone who had to teach/work before computers were in general use. My kids did pretty well -- the standard pass rate here is 40%, regardless of the difficulty of the test or the teacher's preference, and about half of mine passed, which sounds terrible but is actually pretty good. Only 5 out of 52 passed their physics exam, if that gives you an idea. But a lot of mine passed! Even though some of their compositions are pretty funny. But it was very encouraging to see some of them that I didn't expect to do well actually getting the right answers.

In other news, I got stung by a scorpion! It was actually pretty funny. It hurt pretty badly, but now I have definitely won some street cred (if anyone who uses the phrase "street cred" can actually possess it). And generally the scorpions are very afraid of me and run away at the slightest movement. The termites are not. They are intense and they have discovered my firewood pile. Termite heaven! I did not realize that the big ones bite until I came here, but they do. During a lull in the afternoon I was poking the termite mound outside school with a stick (I'm not proud, but it's necessary to reveal this for the story) and a bunch of the girls who sleep in the old Form 1 classroom, and thus were there in the afternoon, got a huge kick out of this. After a couple of minutes I was ready to go back to grading exams, so I went back to my desk. Three girls followed me, laughing hysterically and waving their arms: their hands were COVERED in termites that had clamped on with their little red pincers. I was, naturally, slightly upset, until I realized that they were tricking me. The skin on their palms and fingers is so thick and dry from years of hoeing, carrying firewood, and so on that they couldn't feel a thing. Then I laughed, too, but I still made them get away from my desk. Because it was gross.

I recently sent a list to my lovely sister of some potential baby names that I've heard in Malawi, either in my own classroom or from other Volunteers, and I think I should share it here. Enjoy.

Common Malawian names: Precious, Happy, Blessings (or Madalitso), and Problems (or Masuzgo, yes, it's terrible).

Less common names:
Don't Forget
Ask
Harvester Clever
Golden
Famous
Dinner
Alpha and Omega (one child, but not an only child)
We Were Happy
Lose, like the flower. Malawians often mix up R's and L's, and thus...
Frolence
Dolothy
Dollah
Werrington
and Flank.

I meant to bring my memory cards with me to Lilongwe to post some pictures of my site, but like an idiot, I forgot. Sorry! I won't make any promises about next time, because I am obviously unreliable, but I will try to remember!

Monday we are heading south to Blantyre, where there is a MOVIE THEATER, and, rumor has it, ice cream. Wish us luck in our quest.