thoughts

so i'm terrible at journaling. i always have been. i'm actually getting better at writing my thoughts down, but it's not an organized process at all. i use the backs of notebooks, and write some thoughts in different emails to people and write some journals to myself as word documents, and some thoughts i actually put down in the journal i brought for that purpose, or on here....but mostly its just on the backs of pieces of papers and class notes. so even though i'm writing it down my thoughts are all still a mess. o well.

but let's see. i feel like there are always a lot of little things i want to write about and my last few posts have been annoyingly long. so i'll just write a bit about my community service because that's what i'm thinking about right now, and i'll try to write short little notes more often...as long as the internet cooperates. the past week has been rather hectic with school projects, and fun because of my community service activities. In one class, we have a group project due next week. In the documenting class we actually started some real filming with a small 5 minute exercise, but it's hard to get our group members together. Another class we also have an assignment due and are supposed to be working on our final paper already....it'll be a doozie.

but community service. on monday i went for the trumpet lesson thing i do, and didnt expect much to happen, because....well. the school is really disorganized, and half the time i don't know what is going on and i never know what to expect. Originally i had been told i could come teach 5 kids during one of their free periods on friday. i asked the kids if i could teach them after school some days to give them extra time to practice. Also, i had been canceled on a few fridays because other activities were being done. So now i go on fridays to see if they want me there, and mondays and wednesdays after school. but on mondays the girls have football practice, so i only expected the boys to be there, and i expected the two of them to just want to leave. oftentimes my lesson is not so much of a music lesson either and more of just a pass the trumpet around and let whichever random kids are hangin around take a turn blowing. they seem to enjoy that more than me trying to teach music anyway...so whatever. it's their time not mine. BUT this monday was cool cuz there was an older kid there who apparently has been learning trumpet as his church, so i was actually able to show him things, and that was exciting for a change. now the trumpet books will come in handy because at least he'll understand them.

my other community service is finally really having something happen too. At the West African AIDS Foundation WAAF, i really had to push for the Passion Squad to get started again, which is the program teaching in the schools. and i had helped before fall break pass out questionnaires to assess the kids, but this week we actually had three days to teach the kids after school. yesterday, today and tomorrow. we'd been told from 2-5, but we haven't gotten started before 3 either day....but thats just how things work. yesterday was really quite amusing when we had time for questions with the kids to see what these kids think about and the questions they have, and just how their minds work. there are so many funny things. at first me and the other leaders were telling the kids not to laugh at another kids questions, but there were a few even we couldnt not laugh at they were just so outrageous. today we talked less about HIV/AIDS directly and were more covering puberty info with the kids, which they should have gotten a bit of education about in schools, but from what we saw rather limited education, and it was interesting seeing what some of the things they think are. We also got a few rather disturbing questions, and are going to have to figure out how to address topics such as rape which came up, but i might be able to go to their club meetings in following weeks, and there are some kids who you can tell just really have a lot going on in their heads and it's really good. so generally i'm excited even though the end of our lesson today was a bit of a downer. i have to run off to dinner now, but will try to write again soon because just so much is going on. for example we have another (and last official) homestay this weekend. so i'll probably write sunday or monday about that and other things. unless i think of brilliant things to talk about tomorrow. like the craziness that is the post office or the tro-tro station. or the interesting british girl who works at WAAF with me, or the awesome xmas/ new years plans i'm concocting....or something. til then- nicole