Wow, I don’t know how a month has gone by so fast – I guess life just happened. I do know that I wake up with the sun at 5:30 and fall asleep, absolutely exhausted, every night around eleven or twelve. It’s a good kind of tired, and it’s a good life.
The school has been extremely busy – we have had eight volunteers in the last month, which has kept me running. I’m learning a different role as I coordinate schedules and try to make sure everyone is taken care of in this foreign place (which is still somewhat foreign to me). So far, I’ve done a pretty lousy job, but people are forgiving. Our most recent volunteer is a guy who has come to work on the grounds and make improvements on the building (bless his big fat heart – this is not a small task). I searched for a place for him to stay, but found nothing. He wanted to put his money toward the school instead of a guesthouse… so I told him to pack a tent. How’s that for hospitality? Well, we did one better than a tent – we set him up with a nice cot and a mosquito net and reserved a corner on the roof of the school. He had plenty of company – the guard was there along with the local rats and a roaming cat. He had an adventurous spirit, and now I figure he has a better story. It’s fun to have new faces around, and the students and teachers love meeting so many people. I have been excited to see the teachers freely engaging in conversations; they introduce themselves and ask visitors questions… then sometimes look at me to see if they did okay. It’s a different environment, and I really love being part of it. I have also enjoyed getting to know people from around the world - I don’t know how so many people end up here, but here we are. I had some of the volunteers over for dinner, and we collectively represented four continents. We agreed that it was a good beginning to a really bad joke – “so an Australian horticulturist, an English teacher, a Swiss surgeon a guy from Taiwan and a guy from Tennessee walk into a bar…”
There’s also music in the air. One of my best friends gave me a big chunk of change before I left, and I used it to buy a keyboard for the school. (That was an adventure in itself – we made the purchase and delivery Cambodian-style: after price negotiations, I embraced a four- foot, dusty Casio in a black garbage bag and a dented metal piano stand on the back of a motorcycle in the rain.) The kids have been loving it - we sing all the time! The third and fourth graders are rockin’ “This Little Light of Mine” with a lot of “oh yeah”s, and the grade nine students have decided to sing “We Are the World” at the end of the year. Yes, Michael Jackson. I promise you that the 80’s and 90’s will live on forever in this country. A girl asked if we could sing “Hello” by Lionel Richie at the party on the last day of school – so, yes, we have also been rehearsing that with all the soul we can muster. A few students have been eager to learn how to play as well, so there are lunchtime lessons almost every day. It really makes some of the students come to life, and it has the same affect on me.
The rest is just life, sprinkled with weird moments. Like the typical Sunday list: do laundry, buy groceries, and swing by a pharmacy to pick up de-worming antibiotics… for me, not a dog. (Foreigners should do this every three months, I guess – I just got my first dose). I started my on-line graduate classes … again, so that it dominating my world… again. But I have also had the opportunity to house- sit for my friend and her husband during their vacation to Holland. I love their flat – it’s simple and quiet, and it’s perched on top of the city. It’s like a little bird nest – I can see the horizon from both ends of the house. I watch the sunrise while the water boils for my coffee, and on Sunday evenings I get to see the sunset from the opposite balcony. I love looking at the streets below – the old women start walking early in the morning, and the moto-dope drivers are already on their corners, waiting to harass the first person to step out of his gate. The restaurant owner sweeps his floor while the guy across the street does stationary exercises on his roof. Yesterday morning there was a little parade of boys beating drums and a giant wobbly clown. I have been staying here alone, which I love. The only scare came a few weeks ago at eleven o’clock at night – I was talking with my parents on Skype, and suddenly there was a man on the balcony outside the window (on the fifth floor – he wasn’t just strolling by). My mom was yelling from the computer, “Who is it? Don’t open the door – don’t open the door!” Turns out some idiot on the top floor left the hose running and it was dripping on the metal roof of the tenants below… so I got to meet the landlord in his boxers and apologize.
So everything is great – but I am excited to come home!! In two weeks I’ll be boarding a plane – already starting to get restless.
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