Another Post with Minimal Organization

This week was great. The students did a much better job of behaving, even though I had to give out a few detentions, and I feel like I'm getting back into the rhythm of teaching that I was in during student teaching. It took a little bit, but I'm doing a better job now.

Today we went to the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture just north of Ibadan. I felt like I was in Lost, driving through the Dharma Initiative. But it was really great! The food was amazing (I had some great Indian food, and some of my favorite pop here - Schweppes Bitter Lemon) and we got to hang out with 2 of our students: Shuba and Shanti. We drove by vast mown fields with palm trees surrounding them, drove a curvy road through the jungle, passed house after house that looked quite similar (and were colored the same as the Others' homes), and drove by a long lake. When we drove through the jungle, we got out at one point and walked for a quick 2k through bamboo shoots, tall and bendy; jungle vines, hanging low and beautiful; almond trees that spread wide; and ficus trees with giant walls of roots. Butterflies, ants, and many unknown birds were our companions. It was fantastic.

Due to the end of Ramadan being next week, we have a national holiday that means we have Monday and Tuesday off of school (If anyone wants to Skype at that time, I'll try to be online. Let me know what time you want to and I'll do my best to be by my computer (remember the 6 hours ahead time difference (my Skype name is warren.macleod (how's this for a change, no more hyphens, but a ridiculous number of parentheses)))). Funnily enough, we have another short week the next week for Nigeria's Independence Day on October 1st. So we won't have a full week of school for a few weeks now.

I've been noticing that mornings are usually hardest in dealing with homesickness, though it hasn't hit too hard yet. They say that the 3rd week, 3rd month, and 3rd year are hardest for those crossing cultures. Wednesday (the beginning of my 3rd week) was my hardest day so far, but since then I've been doing pretty well.

Random unique trait of Nigerians: They believe cats can be witches and wizards. I've seen only one so far, and that was today at IITA. Several students have written about why they like dogs better than cats, and they've all written that cats are involved in sorcery. Strange, huh?

Do you have any questions you'd like me to answer? It's hard to think about what to share, so if you have questions to guide me, that would help!

Hope your day is going well, and that you have a good weekend!