I am finally teaching but today is a sad day

I appologize for being so out of touch lately. We have started "model school", which is essentially a summer school the Peace Corps staff set up during which kids can pay a nominal amount of money to come and be taught by us teachers-in-training. They win because they get extra practice on material they need to know for the coming year and get to be taught by americans and we win beacuse we get to practice on students in a situation where it doesn't really matter that we aren't very polished yet. I'm bringing my camera tomorrow so I'll be able to explain more about schools here and the like. Anyway, each of us are teaching an hour each day, and I am particularly short on time beacuse it does take a lot of time to plan a lesson in French when one is not fluent in said language.

On top of that I have signed up to be tutored with two of my friends after the close of classes each day. With the start of model school, there are fewer language classes, and so I feel like I could use the practice. Monday, Wednesday, Friday will be French and Tuesday Thursday will be Mooré. Anyway with that on my plate I get home around now; about 7 pm. That gives me enough time to bathe, eat dinner, and plan some lessons before bed at 9 pm.

I got to talk to Tiana on Sunday for the first time since I got here which was a great!

But it is a sad day because my two best friends here, Chris and Jamie ETed today. ET is code for Early Terminate. They decided they were going back to America. Chris didn't show up for class today and then after teaching I found them both back at ECLA all packed up, and so we all got to be sad and say goodbye. Normally the ETs just evaporate out of here without a trace, so it was nice to be able to say goodbye, even if it was awkward for them to hang around a little longer.

So we've lost two SE volunteers out of 17 and three GEE volunteers out of 12. That makes us 24 now. I'll miss them a lot. But whatever makes them happy - this certainly isn't for everyone.