School has opened/Stones into Schools/I hate bats!

16/1/2010

Well school is officially opened as of this past monday, though classes have yet to begin. I hopeful they will start monday, but we shall see. It seems the standard mode of operation for schools opening goes something like this. The first week or so is dedicated to cleaning the classrooms and doing a bit of work on the school grounds, like weeding and such. Knowing this is the case, most of the students choose not to come right when school opens. When they do arrive I think varies greatly from school to school, and here at least we went from 30ish on monday to maybe somewhere between 100 and 200 on friday out of roughly 600 total students. Thats excluding the form ones, who aren't due to arrive till monday. Most of the teaching I'm doing is in form one so if a fair amount show up on monday, I want to start teaching. Stay tuned for updates.

I received Stones into Schools in the mail as a christmas present from my aunt Judy and uncle Neil (thanks heaps you two). It is written by Greg Mortenson, the author of Three Cups of Tea. I haven't read that one yet, but I've been aware of it for some time, thanks to Adam Rones, though I didn't know entirely what it was about. Greg Mortenson runs an NGO that builds schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and they try to aim at girls in particular. His new book focuses mainly on their Afghanistan operations, which they began roughly 6 years after beginning in Pakistan. The book is focused around one school in an extremely, uber-remote area of Afghanistan, with lots of other anecdotes along the way. I highly recommend this book to all, and I wanted to give it a short plug on my blog, per the request to do so at the end of the book, in a list of ways to help. I believe if you purchase the book from amazon, part of the proceeds go back into the NGO.

I hate bats. They scare me and keep me up at night. Last night (the second time this has happened) when I woke around 2 to use the toilet, after I had crawled back in bed I began to hear a shuffling around among my bags. I had heard this before. The first time I was really creeped out because in the dark, or even with the light on I couldn't quite tell what it was. The morning after the first time I saw that it was a bat (not a mouse or rat as I feared) managed to get it outside. Last night was noiser than the first time, so I was thinking that maybe it was indeed mice or something this time. I did not get out of bed to check but instead put on my headphones and attempted to go back to sleep. In the morning I didn't see anything but the corner of my spare room that is always filled with little turds (bat droppings I assume) days after sweeping was extra full. Nevertherless, I went about my morning.

I had some bread, fruit and coffee for breakfast then went outside to start weeding my courtyard and do a little gardening. I had planned to do my courtyard, plant a little bed, then move on to my big garden rea outside, but halfway through the small bed in the courtyard I was starting to get a bit tired and I also realized I didn't remember how to properly double dig a bed like we had learned at training. So I did a crappy bed in my courtyard, planted some green peppers and tomatoes, and deciding to postpone the big garden a few days or a week.

Then when I was cutting veggies for my lunch, I heard the squeaking noise coming around my trash bag. I got a stick and nudged the bag a little and could see the tip of a wing, so I went next door and told my neighbor and he just walked in, picked it up, and took it away. I hope I don't have anymore incidents for a few days at least so I can get a proper nights rest. In the meantime, however I finally hung my mosquito net. There aren't any mosquitos here so I had been slow in getting around to hanging it. Now it will serve duly as a mosquito net AND as a bat net.

Thats all for now. Cheers!