The One with the Monkey

Hi everyone!

It's been a busy week starting our full day, full week kindergarten classes. It's been incredibly challenging with both the language barrier and a completely different way of teaching and discipline here. The kids are quite ... insane. 'Terrors' might be a good word ... today I got bit, broke up a fist fight, and spent most of the day yelling at kids to stop hitting one another. Needless to say ... glad that tomorrow is Friday. Lesley gave me some time to spend supervising the class by myself, as most of the time I am just observing ... and it was challenging and nerve wracking to be in charge of so many kids on my own! We had thirty today, the most we've had, but thirty-six are registered. So our class may grow.

The past couple nights after school we've spent exploring. I tend to stay inside in the evenings, minus an occasional trip to the rooftop to see my sky, but Tuesday night Lauren and Kylie encouraged me to go for a walk with them. We loaded up on bugspray and went for a walk down the main street. We didn't get too far before we were greeted by a friendly woman into her shop, so we stopped to talk, and visited with her family ... and their pet monkey! Their pet monkey is named Hope, and his favorite treat is bubble gum. They gave us some bubble gum so we could see him play with it, and he pulled it out of his mouth, played with it with his hands ... it was hilarious. The lady, Gladys, is a teacher here in Asamankese, and her English was great - she taught us a few Twi words, and sent us home with some ground nuts. They are sweeter than peanuts and small and round. The kids that were there loved playing with Lauren's iPhone and listening to her music, and Gladys told us that the next time we come from Canada she wants us to bring her back an iPhone, haha! Anyways, Asamankese is a different place at night. Everyone is out and about, walking and visiting and it was awesome to experience it.

Yesterday after school Lesley and I went to visit the girl from Switzerland that stopped by the school a couple weeks ago to introduce herself (I think I blogged about it). She is here until December, and invited us to come visit her and her host family. She is volunteering at a hospital about a half an hour away from here, and staying with a family who runs an orphanage. We had quite the adventure on the way there. We hired Isaac, one of Belinda's friends, to take us there in his taxi, but we got stopped at a police check. There seemed to be an argument or disagreement between Isaac and the taxi driver, and before we knew it the police driver poked his head into the window of the backseat, and said, "You are welcome here. But your driver is misbehaving. We are going to call you another taxi." So we waited, confused, until another taxi picked us up to drive us the rest of the way. Needless to say, we later found out that the police told him he was underage to own a taxi (?) and actually threw him in jail and confiscated his car! It was such a strange situation!

Anyway, we finally made it to meet Sarah and her host family, and they were incredibly welcoming and excited to see us. They showed us the orphanage and we met all of the kids, fourteen of them in total. Kylie and the rest of us hope to visit again this weekend as they are always looking for volunteers. We met two other girls, from Holland, who are spending a couple months at the orphanage to help out. We talked about where we'd travelled, where we hoped to travel still and all the things we missed about home (showers, flushing toilets, and cheese!).

So anyways, I am headed off to bed to be well rested for what I am sure is to be a crazy day tomorrow. Please keep us all in prayers, and especially the students as I know one of our biggest challenges is the language barriers. Missing you all!

Angie