General Update

So, as tends to be the case, things have been happening here. I shall try to mention a variety of them.

The Most Significant Bit

I guess I’ll start with the most significant bit: there is one particular lady amongst our volunteer group who is basically an extremely awesome person and a total badass. I can’t really give a proper description without going on at tremendous length, and I imagine most people reading this blog aren’t interested in such a length-to-basic-facts ratio, and therefore I won’t go into said length here. If you want more info, though, bug me via email.

We became friends early on in the training process, and have kept in touch now that we’re at our sites. What with how she’s hella amazing and hella badass, I’ve developed a romantic interest in her, and I let her know on Valentine’s Day, at which point she informed me that the interest is mutual, which was basically really cool. Unfortunately, we’ve been assigned to opposite ends of the country, but we’ll be able to see each other next month at In-Service Training.

In-Service Training

Next month we’re all going back to our old training site in Morogoro for ten days for some sort of additional training. Peace Corps hasn’t really told us any details, except that we’re also supposed to bring a teacher from our school and we’ll be doing the training with them. I’ll be bringing the other math-teaching teacher from my school.

Although I don’t know much about the training itself, there are a few things about IST that I do know and that I’m quite excited about:
- seeing everybody from our training group again (and particularly the abovementioned badass lady)
- milkshakes exist in Morogoro
- pizza exists in Morogoro

Teaching

I’ve been continuing to teach, of course. Highlights:
- The other ICT/Math teacher has left the school, and Peace Corps says I’m not supposed to teach more than N hours per week, which means I’m not supposed to pick up the slack, which means that half the students are no longer being taught either math or ICT. I’m still thinking about what to do about this. Tanzania has a teacher shortage in general, and this is hardly the most extreme case around.
- I’ve been ruling the computer lab with an iron fist. I tried to be all nice and easygoing and whatnot, but the students’ excitement, and desire to explore things without knowing what they’re doing or really learning anything, quickly overpowered their interest in actually being taught things, so I’ve had to clamp down in an attempt to increase the rate of learning. So far it seems to be working well, although I’m still having doubts about the whole being-taught-vs-exploring-on-your-own thing.
- I think my Form 3 math students now understand exponents, decimals, and how to make graphs, which is good. They were supposed to learn this stuff two years ago, but many of them were having troubles with it in my classes, so I’ve just done a giant review session. I’m giving quizzes on it all now-ish and will find out for sure how well they know it over the next few days.

MOOII

I’ve been continuing to play MOOII. For those who are interested in it: I’ve developed a theory that Neutron Blasters + Tractor Beams, transitioning later-game into Neutron Blasters + Teleporters, are probably the best non-missile weapons in the game until you get to extreme endgame tech. Haven’t given it enough testing though. Also, it seems that when you ban missiles and devote 12 of your race points to being good at spying, it’s tough to not suck in the early game.