I'm really bad about keeping up with the blog, but it is kind of hard to get done sometimes, and I've been pretty busy lately with the school year in full swing and all. It's great though, I prefer being busy to having absolutely nothing to do like the first month I was in village. Now, I'm teaching 6eme and 5eme math and biology, 6eme is roughly the equivalent of 6th grade, and 5eme 7th to 8th grade (although there are a few giant kids in my 6eme class who must be about 16 years old, but this is common as a lot of kids repeat grades here). I feel like I should briefly explain how classes work here, it's slightly different from the states. There are 4 classrooms lined up side by side at my school, one for 6eme, one for 5eme, one for 4eme, and one for 3eme (6th, 5th, 4th, and 3rd level, which is kind of like 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th grade- backwards from the American system). Each grade level is not broken up into several classes like it normally is in America, so all of the 6eme students have class together, all the 5eme, and so forth. I mention this because I'm about to say that there are 133 students in the 6eme class. That's 133 6th graders, all in one classroom, all at one time, with me at the head trying to keep them from completely going crazy, much less actually teach them anything. It's pretty much a circus everyday with them. The students sit 3 or 4 to a desk, and there is only one aisle I can walk up and down. When I call students to the board to do problems, often they have to walk on the desks to get out of their rows. It's a little crowded, and often very loud. The 5eme class is only about, maybe 50 students, I'm not sure exactly. It's much more calm and much easier to teach them. I find class with the 6eme students almost a daily struggle right now. The last time I had class with them I told them that each time I had to tell them to be quiet I would add one minute to class. I added 18 minutes, but then halfway through the class it started raining. This may not seem like a big deal, but with no electricity, when it rains it's dark, and with a tin roof when it rains it's loud. So, basically the students couldn't hear what I was saying or see what I was writing on the board. Luckily, the rainy season is pretty much over so this won't be a problem too often. I ended up having to cancel the rest of class, but I made the students come in an hour early the next day to make up for the half hour we lost and the 18 minutes I added for their bad behaviour. I hope next time I don't have to do that again, it's as much of a punishment for me as it is for the kids. It's funny though, I would walk up to the board and make a big slash mark every time they got too loud and then they would start eating each other alive and getting all mad at each other. I'm just disappointed the rain kind of put a damper on my discipline that day, but hopefully the students will be better next time.

Village life is great. Right now I came in to Ouaga for the weekend. I really have no good reason to be here other than the fact that the World Series is shown at the American Embassy, and I want to catch a game. I get to use the great wireless internet at the Peace Corps transit house, and spend a lot of money on food, but at least it's good food. It's actually kind of nice to just get away for a few days and relax with some semblance of normalcy.

So, I'm thinking about constructing a garden for my school. The kids have school lunches available (not yet, but hopefully within the next few weeks), but their school lunch really has little to no nutritional value, and if they had a garden, we could grow some tomatoes, beans, peppers, etc. to supplement the lunch. The problem with the garden is that it costs a little bit to get started, a fence has to be built (cows and goats roam free around my school grounds), some supplies have to be bought (watering cans/buckets, seeds, manure, insect repellant so the plants don't get devoured), and a small amount of labor may have to be paid for the fence. I know there are several people at home who seemed interested in helping out with this kind of thing, but I hate to ask people for money. It doesn't take a lot to go pretty far in Burkina, so if there happens to be anyone interested in helping out with a project like this, please send me an email (ashleyh001@aol.com) and I can let you know more details about it. Also, if there were any extra money after the garden, there are several students at my school (actually it's more than several) who lack things like notebooks, pens, and rulers and stuff like that, so any extra money would go to buying things like that for the students. I will be happy to send a detailed email of plans to anyone interested in helping out, or just anyone curious about what I'm trying to do, but I prefer not to put up all the info here.

I'll be around Ouaga today and tomorrow until Sunday morning, and I have skype capability now, so if anyone wants to talk to me (for free!) and you have a skype username (free to get one if you don't) all you need is a microphone (or camera/microphone) and we can talk for free across the ocean. It actually works really well. Gonna go get some juice or something delicious and cold that I can't get in village, so that's a good update for now I think. Oh yeah, I sent in my absentee ballot today, hope everybody is planning to get to the polls soon, from what I hear a lot of people already have! Thanks for all the great birthday love from home, I got lots of cards and packages, and I (and my friends in village) love to get mail (the kids love m&ms, and stickers, and empty boxes, pretty much anything). Thanks so much!

Oh yeah I keep forgetting things..the picture is of some kids in my courtyard playing with these giant beetles the find in the fields. I came home from class one day to find the kids swinging these things around on little pieces of string, and upon closer inspection I saw that it was a big bug. They tie a string around it's neck or leg, and the beetles fly around and they hold the end of the string. It's like a kite. They call it "mouton" which is French for sheep, which only confuses me more than the fact that they're swinging beetles around on a string. Ok, really going to get something to drink now. Sadly, I left my nalgene bottle in a taxi. I was rather attached to that bottle, but life goes on.