Wrapping Up

1st of all: Happy Birthday Wanda!!!

This is my last week of work before leaving on vacation, and as such I am trying to get all of my classes to a good stopping point (it's not even worth pretending that any of my students are going to do anything while I'm away. I'm no longer that optimistic). That point is different for each class and so I am keeping myself busy adding extra classes here, going to see students there, and otherwise trying to be productive.

Spent this morning at GIPS wrapping up typing class with the womens groups that I work with. One student has finished the entire proggram, so there's something accomplished, right? I hope to get in a few lessons with Microsoft Excel so they can use it while I'm away, but yet again I am not so optimistic as to whether they actually will. I have also started teaching accounting to a local tailor and am feeling a lot of pressure to get her recordkeeping skills in shape before I leave. She has never used any type of recordkeeping system before and so we are starting from scratch here. She's actually doing really well with the first two lessons and I have learned that I really like this type of work. Teaching typing classes does not make me happy. I do it because I think that it will benefit my students. It's for their own good, if you will. Teaching accounting on the other hand makes me feel like I am really having a direct impact on this tailor's business. I don't know if that's a very good explanation, but I suppose it's that the effects of my teaching accounting to tailors is much more noticeable than teaching typing. I would like to find more people to teach accounting to during my second year here.

I have three days of classes left here in Thiès, and three days of classes in Pout, then off to Dakar.

My host mom's eldest son, who is attending college in Maryland, is here to visit this month. It's the first time he's been back to Senegal since leaving for the states 6 years ago. It's really nice to talk to a Senegalese who knows about my country (especially the fact that the streets are not paved with gold and that everyone lives exactly like Jack Bauer off of 24) and it's been a lot of fun to talk to him. He will be staying with my family for the week before visiting his dad's side of the family in the south of the country next week.