First Week of Teaching!

The first week of school went by so fast, we were crazy busy everyday trying to make lesson plans and get used to the schedule and learn our students! The diversity in this school is so intense. I feel that we learned so much about diversity in school, but I never really experienced it until now. The majority of my students are bi-lingual and are learning French at the school! I sent home a parental information form and many of the parents indicated that the students visited 20+ countries. I really love my class and we have been having so much fun. Sometimes is it is hard to believe that I am a real teacher already!

Life here has been an easy transition. We have been so busy that sometime we even forget that we are in Nigeria. We have been very creative with our cooking and we make dinner with 3 other teachers every night. This week we made banana oatmeal cinnamon pancakes…boy they were good! J It is a lot of fun. We have also made an effort to swim on a regular basis in our compound for exercise. We even had our very first lizard in the apartment this week!

Every Friday there is a TGIF party at one of the staff member’s houses. It was in our compound so we partied there and swam for a while. Then Saturday we went to an open air market and bought some Nigerian print fabric. We will go to a tailor sometime this week to make our very first Nigerian wear! We also spent a long time working on more lesson plans, and had dinner and a movie with some friends. Sunday was our adventurous day! One of our coworkers took us out to a dam bright and early in the morning. It was a little ways out of Abuja, and boy was it BEAUTIFUL. We saw so many trees and plants it was amazing. It was really nice to get out of the business of the city. There were men that used hollowed out trees as canoes and we met a young man that said they fished for perch there.

Later then in the afternoon we visited a local farm. Another teacher took us to meet him. He was so kind and giving, he does not sell his crop because he believes that you shouldn’t have to buy food, it is for everyone. Instead they create art and music in which they sell. He takes his crop to many local hospitals and provides it for the patients there as the hospitals here do not have food in them. While we were there they were filming a music video. We got to be part of it singing the course! We have only been here 2 weeks put we are already famous…lol. It was very ironic because this man lives in a small 1 room hut, but has a cell phone and wireless internet.

We miss you all so much and hope that everything back home is going well! We think and pray for you often!