Hey Everybody
So I know my posts have been pretty upbeat so far, as I didn't want anyone to worry about me unnessesarily.  But I've been extremely unhappy here.  I never thought I would miss home and my friends so much.  I also didn't think some of the cultural differences, especially between men and women, would bother me so.  Teaching is a nightmare.  I feel completely untrained and not ready to teach a class of 50.  So i've decided to come home.  It would be better for me and the people that have to put up with me around here.  I don't think i'm meant for overseas living.  So I'm sorry if this lets anyone down or disappoints you.  I tried my hardest and made it through some tough experiences and i'm just ready to be home.  Thank you for all your prayers, letters, phone calls, and e-mails. I wouldn't have lasted as long as I did without it.  I'll be updating this again when I know more details about my arrival in the states.
Court

School was supposed to start on Monday but what ended up happening was slow motion registration. The kids trickled in from 8-10 and then they registered and paid their dues and then stood around for hours talking to their friends while us teachers sat under a mango tree chatting.
Tuesday we took attendence, i'm a homeroom teacher for an 8th grade class, and then the kids cleaned the classroom and we continued to sit around for the rest of the day.

Wednesday the kids brought tools, hos, rakes, cutlasses(machetes), and were instructed to clean up the school grounds. So I had to stand by the area my class was cleaning and keep them working. I can't say i felt too comfortable standing beside a field as black children worked away in the boiling hot sun, of course it's still rammadan so this is all while they are fasting. Then the kids weren't working hard enough so some of the male teachers grabbed branches from the tree, taking of the leaves, and coming over to where the students were shouting about flogging. I was like uhm there's no way i'm doing that. But they didn't hit the kids, thank goodness, and later talked about how they want to phase out using corporal punishment and just use it as a scare tactic. I'm hoping that's true and I won't have to witness it!

Today we took attendence and then had a staff meeting while all the students sat in their classrooms probably bored off their asses for like 4 hours. At the staff meeting i found out what i'll be teaching and it will be 8th grade math and computers. I was actually given a choice between math and science and i chose math. It really is easier to teach. Although it's harder for the kids to understand I think I can do it. The teachers here are all really great. They have some good ideas for school improvement and seem eager to implement them. They were also really worried about over loading me, something PC warned me about, and so i'm starting slow and will add more classes if I can. I'm also going to be a part of some of the clubs the school has: peer health counseling, agriculture, child protection club, pe club, and social club. PLUS they want to build a library so i'm going to try to help them out with that in the future. I'm starting to feel like i MAY actually make a difference!

As the title states, next monday will be my first day of actual school teaching. I'm starting to get a little nervous. Hopefully i'll be a good teacher and all that!

Lately i've just been working on getting myself set up and getting to know some people. My family is really nice and helpful and really wants me to consider myself one of the family. My house is holding up well. It's so big I still can't fill all the space. But today I bought curtains to try to dress it up a little! I am hooked up to the electricity now so I have a few lights and can charge my phone and ipod when i need to. It's a pretty sweet set up.

Yesterday I started my garden. So far i'm growing squash, cabbage, sweet peppers, and carrots. We'll see if anything actually grows! As I was working on it my dad came out there to help me weed and asked me if I had seen inside the little shed that's in my backyard, did i mention my backyard is huge? I said no I hadn't seen in the shed so he opened it and it's a freaking toilet on one side, like an actual toilet and a shower on the other with an actual shower head. I was in shock. Of course they don't work, I think they were set up as wishful thinking for the future of running water. But I'm still amazed that there's the potential!

I'm really enjoying Basse. It's like the best of both worlds. There's ice cream, beer, burgers, fries, electricity(sometimes) but it's much safer than the capital area. I lucked out on this one.

Over the last few days I've been biking a lot I biked about 75K, a good start i think. It felt so good to be moving my body again, now i want to ride my bike every day, i suppose that's a good thing huh? Anyway i've babbled enough for one day, I still miss home a lot and hope everyone is doing well!

So this entry is going to have a lot of errors and i'm sorry about that but the keyboard sucks horribly and i'm pressed for time...Gambian internet cafes are an experience.
By the title you can probably tell i'll had an interesting last few days huh? To start with when we finally got to my site on Sunday night, completely exhausted for 13hrs in a car on the horrible roads, my house was in not so good shape. There were lots of frogs, crickets, lizards, and many pools of water, my own little swamp environment. \i didn't really complain too much \i was too tired, so we unloaded my stuff and they took off to take the next girl to her site. About an hour the driver/maintanence man showed up again and said pack your stuff up it's time to go you can't stay here it's uninhabitable. \of course at this point \i had decided to completely empty my two huge trunks in order to re-organize. lol so \i threw stuff in the trunks, bags, and whatever else \i could find in five minutes and off we went. \i stayed the night at the basse transit house that night. The next day \i just kind of hung around waiting to find out if they could find a better house for me.
\monday came and went and still no luck but I started thinking about being proactive about things. \i said from the start \i wnted to be in a bigger town and Basse is a bigger town. So since \i didn't have a house if i found a house and a school that would let me teach they would probably let me stay right? So that's what \i did with the help of my fellow volunteers. We found a house and a job teaching 10th grade science here in Basse. So all the stuff \i said and pictures \i put up about Suduwol doesn't matter because \i'm now in Basse!
But my house here is great it's two of the huts like the Suduwol house connected with a middle lobby thing. \it's huge and \idon't know what to do with all the space! Anyway my time is about to run out so i better get this posted but that's for all your responses, things are looking up here!

Well it couldn't last forever. Tomorrow I'm off to my village to get all organized and ready to start teaching. haha I don't even know what day school starts! I found out I passed my language test and was officially sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Pretty sweet huh? It was a long time coming but I'm finally done with training and can maybe take a deep breath (maybe). I have mixed emotions about leaving because it's been really nice having electricity and internet and all the goodies of being in the capital. But it's also nice to be out in the middle of nowhere where I can do what I want and just relax. I'm totally excited to set up my house and start cooking on my own. The best way to reach me in the next 22.5 months will be mail, e-mail, and calling my phone in case of emergency. I get mail once a month, will try to travel and check e-mail 1-2 times a month and will have my cell phone on during the day most days. I hope everyone has a good start to the school year and miss you all a bunch!

PS: KT you didn't even have to add your name when I read your comment I knew it was from you! Oh and no I haven't cured AIDS yet and will keep you updated about the other projects I get started! Miss you!


PPS:
Some people have been asking about what to send me that I'd like...
-Scissors
-duct tape
-aerosal bug spray
-old clothes/books/ect you don't want and I or the Gambians can use
-Gatorade powder-nonexistent here
-granola bars
-gummies of any kind
-parmesan cheese, lol impossible to find
-pictures of the people at home
-markers
-sharpies
That's all I can think of now, but I'm sure i'll think of more, thanks a lot!

Courtney Smith, PCV
U.S. Peace Corps
P.O. Box 582
Banjul, The Gambia
West Africa
220.766.7766

Today was another day in the Kombo area of The Gambia. We had class all morning then our last language test right before lunch. It was tough as usual but hopefully I passed. If not I don't get to swear in as an official volunteer on Friday =(. That would definitely suck. I'm starting to get really excited to start teaching and for a community secondary project. I'm thinking I want to work with any NGOs that will work with me on a bed net project. It seems that access to bed nets and convincing the people that it's worth it to use one would help drastically decrease the number of deaths from malaria, the number one killer here. Hopefully I'll be able to get something going with that in the next year. I got a package from my mom today and that was great. I also got a letter from her and from Amanda. I miss the people at home so much at times it's pretty rough. But I still know this is what I should be doing and can't wait to make my mark!
court

Today I finally arrived back in the Kombo, urban, area. It took us 3 days to travel but I've now officially traveled from one end of the country to the other. I've tried to update my blog as much as possible so hopefully this will give you some insight to my training village experience. I'll update more if I can but I've to be brief as there are always people waiting to use the computer. I miss everyone at home and I hope you're all doing well!!

Today was the first day of model school, where I got to pretend to be a teacher. I've never been so overwhelmed. It was hard for so mnay reasons. The morning was completely unorganized as I'm learning a lot of the school system is. i taught for 2 hours and felt like I'd just run a marathon at the end, it was completely draining. I was definitely near tears. This has really been a rough last few weeks for me. After that we had to come back and have more training sessions. At about 4 pm they said oh and if you have any issues you need to bring up to the head person do so now because we're telling you your final sites by 6pm. yeah, i had a minor heart attack. But I hadn't changed my mind so I didn't go talk to her. In the initial interview I said I wanted as urban as possible. close to the coast, and by a hospital so I could volunteer.

I am placed in the second farthest site inland, almost to Senegal. I am in a rural town and i'm not near a hospital. In essence my initial reaction was pissed off. I found out it's a Serahule village (not Mandinka, the language i've been learning) then I was more pissed. But the good things are that it's a richer village, being further inland I can travel surrounding West African countrys. It's about a half hour ride to Basse and the girl there before me loved it. Also I'll be at a basic cycle school grades 1-9 so I'll get to interact with the younger kids more too...

So last night I woke up for about 2 hours off and on. I kept thinking bugs were on me, turns out I wish I were that lucky. When my alarm went off I didn't want to wake up so I rolled over to give myself 5 extra minutes. I felt something on my arm and jerked away, looked ot see and I figured it was just my stuffed animal. I looked arounda a little more an saw a mouse scamper across my net presumably up onto the frame above my bed holding up the net. But then there was no mouse to be found up there. That's when the little fucker ran back down onto my bed. It was trapped under the net with me. I'll throw in here that I was of course trying to scream the whole time but couldn't. I had no idea what to do so I went with my first instinct and punched it. lol. I may have hurt it's leg at that point because it started running away with a limp. I didn't want to touch it again so my next weapon of choice was my head lamp. So I threw my only light source at it. lol thankfully that made it flp on it's back spasming. So i got in my bag and got out my coffee cup, trapping him. I slid my journal under him and flipped it over to make a cage. I had no idea what to do with it so I secured the lid and took my bucket bath. By the time I came back to cehck on it it was dead. I took it to class in a baggie to show everyone. My LCH said she'd come by and talk to my family and see what we can do. But I'm pretty terrified to go to sleep tonight...

HAPPY 4th of July!! So last night I couldn't sleep well. no there aren't rats at Tendabe but I'm so used to waking up to them at 2am that I woke up then. So I was pretty tired and grumpy all morning. Then someone brought up the fact that it's the fourth of July and I realized I was missing out on all of the things that my friends are doing. the parade, carnival, the fun pot luck at Jen's and all that. An hour later people were shouting and screaming, turns out there was a hut, 2 down from ours, completely engulfed in flames

At first I didn't know what to do I mean it's a building on fire 15ft in front of me and everyone was yelling and crying. After a minute or two I pulled myself together and saw that a lof of Gambians had found water containers and us PC people were standing in schock. Then a bunch of us snapped into action. We grabbed whatever we could find that would hold water and ran to the swimming pool to fill it. Then the men would throw it on the fire and we would run back and get more. it was exhausting but what can you do when there are limited fire stations. Halfway through the fight we saw a man drug out of the house with saliva pouring from his mouth. At first I thought he had been in there the whole time and my stomach churned.

It registered in my brain the next second that his skin and clothing hadn't been burnt, most have been smoke inhalation. Thankfully the PC med officer is here to train us and she was able to help him. It was a display of true compassion and human emotion as the entire village and us put this fire out. One of the realext experiences I've had in a long time if that makes any sense

I was hit with the realization of my own selfishness, a feeling of being a tiny tiny speck in a very big world. As I was feeling sad and full of slef pity, a hut was on fire rocking someones world.

That night we had a party thrown for us for 4th of July with free alcohol. We drank and danced and had a great time. When I was walking back to the room I passed the pool and there were 12 of my fellow volunteers swimming butt naked in it. Haha I couldn't resist having my first skinny dipping experince be in the gambia so I jumped on it.