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Sorry its been awhile since my last post. Things are really busy around here as I prepare for my COS (close of service) and my return to America!First of all, I COS on December 8th, that's 52 to days from now (yes, i have a countdown going). I have to finish all my projects, and say goodbye to everyone in the next 2 months. Its sad and overwhelming but exciting at the same time. Its also
This past Friday was the teacher talent show. Apparently it was the first the school has ever had, and it was a HUGE success. This coming Friday, the students are having their own talent show... and believe me, they have big shoes to fill.To start off, I decided to get my hair braided on Thursday. It's something that my fellow teachers have long been encouraging me to do. I've always been
Aside from Mozambique, I had a couple things going on during winter break and the first few weeks of the new semester.Painting at Adam's SchoolAdam arranged to paint the office of the Chief of his village early this winter. He got a ton of his students to come out and paint pictures that they had drawn, most with HIV/AIDS messages.This picture is Eric, Adam, and Andrea starting to paint an AIDS
Earlier this year, Trinity Presbyterian Church donated funds for me to fix the computer in the school office. The computer is now fixed and functioning perfectly (more on this later), and I ended up with about $45 left over. I put this extra money towards a DAR activity in my district. Each district in Lesotho has a District AIDS Representative (DAR). I'm the DAR for Leribe. As part of our
... I've broken since living in Africa.
This weekend is my group's COS conference (Close of Service). Its when we learn everything we need to know in order complete our time here (what paperwork to fill out, logistics of getting home, what exams we need to do before, etc). I honestly cannot believe that its happening right now. Time is flying. Although our conference is this weekend, the
This winter break, I went to Mozambique with my friends. We were there for about 10 days. I’ll preface this post by saying that I was in charge of taking pictures… and 1) I forgot the camera most everywhere we went and 2) I’m in hardly any of the pictures we did end up taking.Our trip started by us taking a 4 hour taxi from Ficksburg to Johannesburg. From there we took an overnight bus to Maputo
Ascension DayOn May 25th, we had the day off school for Ascension Day. A friend/former colleague had invited my friends and I over for a barbeque... but last minute had to cancel because his baby was sick. After some scrambling, I ended up having everyone over to my house for the day for a nice braai. We had tons of pork (marinated in a delicious recipe Adam got from his dad) and we even made
I've written on my blog here and there about a computer program that Adam and I created for high schools to do grade calculations and create report cards. I know I haven't explained very well, so here it is:The program we created started out simple enough. We both noticed that in our schools, staff members wasted hours and hours doing grade calculations for the entire schoool by hand. Then they
Last Sunday, Moses, a teacher who used to work at my school, invited me and Eric to see an orphanage in Maseru that he volunteers his time at. He's been working to help them find donors for various aspects of the center. We went. It was amazing. As soon as we came into the center, we were swarmed by little kids. They were sooooo friendly! They all wanted to be picked up and carried and have their
Today I took a kombi to my site after a trip up north in the morning. I waited by my junction for about 10 minutes before my kombi came. The kombis that go to my house have 3 rows of seats. The first row after the driver is a 4 seater. The row behind that has a one seater, an aisle, and a two seater. The back row is a 4 seater.When it came, I got in and took the last seat in the back row. A very
The shipment of books for my school library arrived here on Friday April 15th! They were collected by my friends and family back in the states and the shipment was coordinated through the African Library Project.My school was so excited and grateful to get the books! Right now I only have pictures of when we went to go get the books from Maseru. They are being sorted and filed by the librarians
One friday at the beginning of April we had a funny day at school. It's almost like a spirit day. The kids came to school dressed in ratty torn clothes, dressed as teachers, or cross-dressed. Everyone had to pay a rand (I don't actually know what the money was going towards)... but it was a fun day for everyone! The teachers all got a kick out of the students' outfits and the kids got to let
Moshoeshoe Day is a national holiday in Lesotho. You can read about it here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moshoeshoe_IEveryone got the day off of school to commemorate on March 11th. The students woke up early and sang songs and danced. It never gets old seeing these kids perform... they are insanely talented. I have great videos I hope you can all see in the future! After the kids finished, the
Pictures from my vacation with my sisters are posted here:http://shanthiphilips.shutterfly.com/And here's a special thank you to Trinity Presbyterian Church. Trinity was able to provide scholarship money to 7 of my students who otherwise would have had a hard time paying school fees this semester and may have been kicked out. The kids were all incredibly grateful (one girl almost cried when I
I know its been awhile since my last post. Apologies.My summer break (December through mid Jan) has just come to a close. It was a busy yet enjoyable time. In the beginning of December, my training class had Reconnect. This is the training Peace Corps has for us around the 1-year mark, where we all get together to talk about the past year and look forward to the next one. Peace Corps very
Thanksgiving! This year was my first year to organize and cook a thanksgiving dinner (with lots and lots of help of course!) Everything came out so so good! It was a huge success despite the limitations of having thanksgiving in Africa. Here are a few random samplings of the photos we took from the day. Enjoy!Thanksgiving decorations, courtesy of Katie's grandma! Made my house look very festive!
... wished to me on my birthday. It means may you live for many years…. But does NOT sound like that :)This is a post about a run I went on last week. Thursday morning at 7:00 am i went on a four mile run. My experience in that short distance I think will give you a very good picture of my life in Lesotho.Mile marker negative .2 : leave my house and walk to the main tar road by my school. Get
Some random stories from my life the past few weeks:LibraryAs I started saying in my last post, I’m collecting books for my school library. So many of you all at home have been working hard to help me with this! THANK YOU THANK YOU! I think we should have enough books by the end of the month. The kids will be thrilled to get their new books when the shipment comes. It should be sometime in
Hello friends,I am working on a project to get more books for my school's library. The library is very nice right now. There are 3 full time librarians. The kids come and use the library at least once a week during english class. They also study in there during study periods.Its beautiful and well functioning (both things somewhat unheard of for libraries in lesotho). The problem though is
Thanks for all the sweet messages of support! It’s been a tough week but i've been trying to stay busy and distract myself as much as possible. So far, its been somewhat ok. I'm sure it will get better in time.My school held a cultural festival today. There were other schools invited from all over the district. The winners haven't been announced yet, but whoever they are will advance to compete
Friends,Sorry for disabling my blog. It’s been an unbelievably rough week and my blog was the last thing I wanted to think/worry about.A fellow PCV from my training class, Tom Maresco, was shot and killed on Friday night in Maseru. I am not at liberty to provide any details. However, I am linking the Peace Corps press release here.http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=
Last week Thursday, I had maybe the worst day at school that I’ve ever had. It all happened in A1. As I’ve said before, A1 is the class where I’m class teacher. I really do love those kids. They are well-behaved, they pay attention, and they are just so cute!However, Thursday was a different story. My class was from 11:40 to 12:20. At 12 o’clock, the church bells started ringing. I didn’t think
I've finally uploaded all my pictures from building keyhole gardens at Rory's site. Sorry there are no descriptions - i may get around to that eventually.Enjoy!http://shanthiphilips.shutterfly.com/332
6:15 am: Drag myself out of bed. Don’t make coffee this morning because my gas stove was malfunctioning (i.e. shooting flames out of the knobs) and I’m too scared to go near it. Instead, force myself to get dressed and get out of the house.6:45 am: meet Martha at the Hall. Today is the second day of our study skills session for the Form Es. The one on Tuesday went well. Today though, we don’t
Hello friends! A new quarter has started here in Lesotho. Classes started last week. I am already feeling the burden of my 28 credits, but am staying positive by doing other projects aside from teaching. it makes the days a bit better.First though, here are some highlights from Winter, aside from world cup.Building key hole gardensMy friend Rory arranged to build 4 keyhole gardens in his
This post is about everything world cup. See my last post for everything else happening with me. Sorry in advance that this is a long post! World Cup has been everywhere for the past month. I’ve been saving my pics and stories to share here:The day the World Cup started was also the last day of exams at school. The teachers had planned a staff party as Tsehlanyane, the beautiful park that I had
I have so many random stories to share! I’m dedicating the next blog post to world cup… and this one to everything else going on with me.- On Wednesday the 30th, my school had a memorial service for my counterpart, Emmanuel. Martha prepared a slideshow of pictures of Emmanuel, which was really touching. Then, a lot a lot of people got up and spoke about him. The service lasted almost 6 hours. It
June 17th, I lost a dear friend and colleague. Emmanuel Motibe, my Peace Corps counterpart, a fellow math teacher, and a good friend, was killed in a car accident 2 weeks ago Thursday. I did not hear the news until that Saturday because I was in South Africa for the World Cup. The news was devastating and shocking. Emmanuel was one of my closest Basotho friends.I don’t even know where to start to
Written last week....May 11th was my 6-month anniversary with Peace Corps.How I failed to mention this, I dont know.But I'm over one quarter of the way done with my service! Its a very strange feeling. On one hand, it really seems like time has flown by. I wonder if 2 years is enough time to help the students at my school in the way I want to. I feel like I've just finally managed to be
i dont think i've devoted enough blog time to the public transportation in lesotho.most of the time, I take kombis anywhere i go. These vehicles are just about as wide as a minivan, but a little longer (like 2 extra rows of seats to make a total of 4). its quite normal to jam 4 adults in each row. SO - on an average trip, you have at least 18 people in there (including the front seats). Not
I started a question jar in each of my 4 classes. They are just yogurt containers that i washed out and decorated and put a slit in the lid of.I told my classes that they can put any questions at all into the jar. If they are quiet during classes, i'll reward them by reading and answering a question at the end of class. i keep track of how many times i have to tell them to be quiet - if it gets
I was sitting in the staff room today talking to a few teachers who really don't want to teach anymore. They are in the process of taking correspondence courses to get advanced degrees and are hoping to find other jobs. It got me thinking - is teaching in Lesotho something I actually enjoy?PROS1. The kids call me 'madam' :)2. I have defined goals and objectives every day. I know this isn't the
This is a picture from last night: I'm on the phone with my mom here and I had the cutest baby in my arms. His name is Thamae (but everyone calls him Thami, which sounds like Tummy). he's the son of one of the teachers at my school, Francis. I had 7 PCVs over at my house for the weekend and Francis came to hang out with his wife and baby. It was so much fun. Also, I think you can see all the
LiphofungThis past weekend I went to a nature preserve/historical site here in Lesotho with other volunteers. We hiked to some caves where King Moshoeshoe (the founder of Lesotho) had stayed. There were also cave paintings on some of the walls from bushmen. Overall, it was very cool.The only thing that sucked was that the hike down to the caves was steep and slippery, there were about a
I've been at my school for a little over a month now.I guess it was naivete looking back at it now - but I thought that I completely lucked out and that corporal punishment was something that my school didn't do... or at least didn't do often.However, ever since Friday, I just see it everywhere. Its overwhelming. I need to figure out some way to respond, because right now I either turn my head
Hi friends!Thank you all for the suggestions on my classroom monitor situation! I gave my class the 'respect' speech on Thursday and think that made things a little better. I'll keep on top of it though and will definitely use your ideas where I can!I just wanted to write a quick post about Friday. It was the first Friday of the month, which means that we have school wide Mass starting at 10
A couple things have happened this week:1. After school activities startedThere are many clubs at school. Like the english club, math/science club, dance club, etc.I'm a 'sponsor' (?) type person for the math/science club. I'm not sure what that entails as of yet, but i went to the meeting this week. We elected the officers. it was kinda funny that one of the officer positions was that of
(written yesterday - but internet went out right at the end so I couldn't post it!)Hi everyone,Its a lazy Sunday afternoon here in Lesotho. I'm relaxing at home listening to the radio (ofm, the sound of your life... its awesome), and intermittenly napping and reading. I realize I haven't posted anything substantial in awhile. School has just gotten busy. I'm teaching 4 classes - which comes
Here is my mailing address for the next two years:Shanthi Philips, PCVHoly Names High SchoolP.O. Bela-Bela 358Maputsoe 350Lesotho (Southern Africa)Also, I found the link to the Lake Union Crew's website. This is the group from the US who came to my school and did a lot of work last year. There are pictures so you can get a feel for the place I'm living at!http://www.lucoutreachfoundation.org/
its funny how little victories make a big difference in moral.... A few highlights from today:- I had both my Form A1 and A2 (8th grade) math classes today for double periods (1 hour and 20 minutes). There are about 45 kids in each class. I was nervous since I didn't actually plan the lessons out at all. I went in though and just opened the book and started teaching. I was surprised how well
I'll preface this post by saying that school lasted for a grand total of 2 hours today.I woke up at 5:30 this morning to get a run in and do pilates, thinking that i had to be on time for the first day of school. Around 7:30, still not knowing where or when i had to be anywhere, i started wandering the teachers' quarters looking for someone who knew what was going on. I finally found a Home Ec
Hey all, thanks for the emails and comments! i'm sure things will turn up - i'm just having a rough week of boredom which gives me entirely too much time to think :) On a more positive note, I've made a list of things I love. Enjoy.World Cup:I’m SO EXCITED for the world cup! Its from mid june to mid july in various cities in South Africa. Almost everyone from Ed ’10 (my peace corps training
I just got back from visiting Maputsoe with Haley and Rory, 2 PCVs who live near me. Maputsoe is a dirty, busy town, right near the border of South Africa. You can actually see Ficksburg, SA from Maputsoe. There are industrial buildings, shops, and just tiny tin shacks side by side lining the main road in Maputsoe. There are tons of kombis and taxis going down the road, shouting to see if they
I'm in Bela-Bela now settling in at my new home. Its wonderful and I love it. There are some teachers and students around, but not many. My supervisor (the school principal) and my counterpart (another math teacher) are both still in Peru. So no one is showing me around or anything. I dont mind I guess, but I'm just quite bored most of the time :) and i even have electricity and can get
Hey Everyone,I have 2 albums up now; just added pictures from our swearing in ceremony. it was a nice 2 hour ceremony... we had to do the whole pledge where we swear to uphold the constitution and protect america against enemies, both foreign and domestic... anyway, it was all good. it was aired on lesotho TV too, which is kinda cool.So that's it - we are real volunteers! Its a bit weird to
sorry there are no descriptions yet! i'll get them up hopefully soon:http://shanthiphilips.shutterfly.com/
Hi everyone!sorry is been so long since my last post. We've been really busy wrapping up CBT and doing more training....First of all, merry christmas and happy new year! i miss being with family and friends during the holidays - hope you all had a wonderful time.I have a few random stories to fill you all in on. i'm going to try to upload pictures today as well - so here's hoping it works!
Hi! i have 15 minutes at the internet cafe today, so i'll make this quick:we found out our sites today! i'm going to be living in the Berea district. its relatively close to the capital. I'm on a school compound... with electricity, running water, and a flush toilet!!! i totally hit the jackpot. now you all have to come visit me! :) i'm less than an hour from one of my friends, so i'm very
Lumela!! - hello :) I have been in Lesotho for almost 3 weeks now! its so crazy to think about. i do not have internet access ever... this is only the second time i've been at an internet cafe! its an adjustment to say the least.i do get facebook on my cell phone, so if anyone wants to send me facebook messages, i can get them! no gmail though sadly. also, my new phone number is 011-266-
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