New Week, New Attitude

New week, new attitude. After last week’s moody Monday, the rest of the week got better and better. A personal highlight was when one of the 12th grade boys in my Math class told me that if I had always been his Math teacher then he would probably be in higher maths. He said that I make everything much easier to understand than his other teachers. I don’t know if that is true, but it certainly made my day, my week.

The school highlight was the Sotte Concert on Thursday evening. A couple weeks ago, I talked Sotte Day (Fools’ Day) which was a team building day for the new 8th graders. Similarly, the Sotte Concert (Fools’ Concert) is not exactly a concert, it is more of a ‘talent’ show featuring performances from the 8th graders. It was extremely entertaining with Saturday Night Live (maybe a slight exaggeration) type skits. One skit, “Types of Learners” made fun of the teacher’s pet learner, the perpetually late learner, the learner who asks the instructions when the teacher has just given them, and so on. Another skit, “Comedy Class” mocked some of the funny comebacks that teachers use on the learners. Many of the skits included songs and dances. “Dance of the Little Swans” was boys in tutus pirouetting across the stage, “Pen Tappers” was a drum-like performance with pens on desk-tops, and on and on. Since I have all the 8th graders for Art, it was especially fun to see each of them entertaining us in such unique ways and seeing such a different side to many of them.

The week ended with a Friday dinner catching up with PCV Alexis. She teaches up in Owamboland along with many other PCVS in my Group 48. On Saturday, PCVs Spencer and Marissa (also down from Owamboland) spent the night with me and we cooked together. PCV Mercedes, Group 50, lives in my town, also came for dinner. We made a black bean, corn, tomato, rice burrito and just ate it like nachos over chips. We also made guacamole and had watermelon for dessert. It was yummy and fun company. Another dessert was candied pecans.

While in Germany, the Christmas Markets sold these candied cinnamon almonds, German Gebrannte Mandeln, that I fell in love with. Between Christmas packages and my trip home, I have many pecans. I found a recipe and substituted pecans for the almonds. Not the same as what I had in Germany, but they were delicious and hit the spot.

All for now with all my love,
Ellen

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