Who's too cool for summer school?

Not me.

Yes, summer school has started and what a wonderful experience it is. Well, I mean it's a change of pace from the usual day of training in the compound, but it really is great. I have two periods in which I teach English to Senior Secondary 1 students and then Language Arts to the Junior Secondary 3 students. I have started teaching the joys of nouns and sentence structure and the students are just loving it (well, in an ideal world they are). All in all, it really is awesome because I finally get to do what we are being trained for. This week was also nice because we had Thursday off because it was Pray Day or the end of Ramadan. As-salaam alaykum!

Pray Day was awesome. I basically spent the day hanging out on the veranda with my host family and greeted a million people who stopped by after praying at the mosque. Also, all the Muslims families around us were bringing food because it is tradition to give gifts on Pray Day. In some ways it is kind of like Christmas because apparently for Christmas all the Christian families makes food for the Muslim families. In the afternoon I went to a play put on by an Islamic youth group. I attended with two other volunteers (Taylor and Annie) and had a great time. The play was supposed to start at 4, but instead we watched a dance party for children 8 and under. And let me tell you, children in Sierra Leone have all American children beat when it comes to dancing. They were putting on all their best dance moves for us. Even though all the dancing was very entertaining, we were wondering when the play would actually start and we only seemed to be the only people attending. By 5 the dancing started to wind down and finally some people were coming in to sit down. But did the play start? Of course not. Instead we watched a skit, listened to some Islamic songs put on by the teenagers, and then finally at 6 the play started. But by that time we could not stay much longer, so only got to see a small portion of the drama, performed in the Krio language, titled "Rich men rarely worship god in the truth form."

Speaking of Krio, I'm really starting to pick it up now and I am also starting to pick up the local language in Bo, Mende. I am also now taking Themne classes, which is the language I will be speaking in Masingbi.

Well, that's it for today. I'm still getting fat according to my host family, so in other words I am very good!

We only have two more weeks left of Summer School/Training and then on August 28th we are officially sworn in as Salone 4 volunteers.

Love and miss you all!