I am attempting to use less offensive potty mouthage in this post

Hey lovelies! I’m back in action!! I just found out where I’m going to live for two years today!!!!!!!!!!!!! AHH! I’m in Thaba-Tseka (if you want to check a map). It’s waay in the mountains, and takes forever to get to, and has the best view! I will be very high up, in a roundavel (traditional round house with a thatch roof) that seems pretty big, and the inside is painted blue! Woo! And I get electricity! So I won’t go blind from reading by candlelight. I am living on a family compound, and another volunteer is a 5 min walk from me, and one of my favorite volunteers (Victoria, has been mentioned here a couple times) is like a 15 min taxi ride away, and another awesome volunteer Lindsey is like 30 mins away., so even though I’m far far away in the beautiful mountains which I will climb, I will have friends around and not be a lonely mountain woman. I’m super psyched.

I’ve been cooking for myself and everything the past couple weeks, and it’s much nicer, my ‘me stays out of my face mostly, and we get a long. She’s kind of a drunk though. She stumbles home all wasted pretty often, and her drunk old people friends visit a lot. They’re really funny. She ululates all the time, and does a funny old person dance. I still get all lonely sitting around my roundavel at night, but I need to get used to it. I think a lot of what I’m missing doesn’t really exist any more, and I need to move on a little I guess. I have a lot of fun hanging out with mad (a.k.a. lebohang, new nickname lebu) who’s my neighbor and we commiserate. Oh, and my ‘me calls me tah-bey for short now. I like it. I like my sesotho name, it’s nice

We finished practice teaching today. It was fine. I had 56 kids in my form B class (like 9ht grade) they were ages 13ish to 23ish in one class. Luckily I’m good at making kids think I’m cool, so they liked me and I got them all excited about learning to round to a specified number of significant figures. And my form E (12th grade) had 11 kids, 3 of which had chem. Before, the others hadn’t so I had 3 know it all jerkfaces, and 8 nice kids. It was hard to juggle them, because the three knew everything about metals and shit, and the others didn’t know what an electron was. It was ok. All form E passed my exam. For form B I literally had the range. There were 3 100%, and one 0%, a few 8%s… etc. here passing is at 40%, and less than half usually pass. It was really nice to get to practice teach and see how I need to be different for Lesotho schools. For one, I have to speak like a slow-motion retarded british person. They don’t understand the American accent with all of our “r’s” and such. Also a lot don’t really know much English, period. So I have to write down almost all I say, and speak VERY SLOW> it’s cool though.
Sucks though, today my friend mad’s foot got ran over by a car!! She’s at the hospital now, they called and said she’s ok, they don’t think any bones are broken. Now I’m super paranoid and jumpy when walking around because drivers here are CRAZY.

. if you send me any sort of package, please lie on the customs form! list boring things! it really makes a difference for getting the package or not. And i am slowly gettign stuff in the mail to you guys letters are boring to write so i've been drawing comic strips of my life. i expect them to be proudly displayed on refrigerators all over the US.

i'm one of the only trainees to not receive a single piece of mail yet, i think the customs people are living vicariously through me or something. oh and there was a request for a day in the life of rebecca. i will attempt to write it here...


6:15ish am: wake up, then i heat some water for bucket baths, then i bucket bathe, and wash my hair, then i wash socks and undies from yesterday in my soapy bath water (it's what you do here, apparently). then i make breakfast, usually a pb and j, or toast, or oatmeal and some fruit. the peaches here are tasty. i've been making pancakes a lot, i make them for dinner and save some batter for breakfast. then i sweep my roundavel, tidy up, look over my lesson plan, dump my old water, boil my drinkng water for the day, get creeped out by the pseudo chickens my 'me bought that sometimes wander in my house. ( i keep thinking of that scene in jurassic park 2 or 3 wehre the guy is eaten by little dinosaurs the size of chickens). then i go to mad's house, then we walk to the bus stop and get teh bus to school.

then i teach/ observe from 8-12:30, with a tea break from 10:15-10:30. (my biscuit intake has skyrocketed!) then we go home for lunch. i've been eating a shoot ton of pasta here. sometimes i powernap. or read. i just finished Blind Assassin from Margaret Atwood and her writing is freaking incredible!! i reccommend it to all my blag audience.

then i go to sesotho lessons from 2:30-4:30/5 then i wander around, or talk to the willagers. or hang with mad. or hide in my roundavel because i want some personal time (which is unheard of here. you must be sick or something to want to stay home by yourself.) also i write my lesson plans during this time. then i make dinner and dishes and eating things from like 6:30-7:30. then i hang . then i do excersizes and stretches from like 730 or 8 for 30-45 mins. then i go to bed and lay around for a while until i fall asleep around 9:30 (i think. my broken alarm clock makes 8 and 9 look the same. same with 5 and 6, which sucks for waking up knowledge).

and that's my day! gotta scooooot


love love love and muffins! (and also maybe a juicebox for liz)