03/05/10

I brought my world map back into class today during my “Life Group” hour and told the kids that we didn’t have anything planned, but they could use it as a study hour, sleep at their desks, talk quietly with each other, or look at the map. It took a few minutes for anyone to get near the map, but after the first kid broke the barrier, there were at least 9 students crowded around the map for the rest of the time, pointing out different countries and places and I even got asked a few geography questions.
This afternoon I was walking into town when I saw a few of my boy students standing by the road with mischievous looks on their faces. When I got closer I realized that they were rolling fruit into the road and were hoping for passing cars to run over them and crush them. So that’s what my kids do after school instead of the homework I assign them.
I had forgotten to write about this. When we were returning from Xai-Xai last week, about 2 hours into our 3-hour trip we heard a large clunk sound as if something had fallen out of the chapa. The car seemed to still work fine so I didn’t think anything of it. A few minutes later I noticed that the driver had slowed down to about half the former speed so I thought, hmmm maybe it was a slightly necessary part we lost. Then I saw a person waiting on the side of the road up ahead and heard a sound that took a second to place: the sound of the emergency brake being pulled up. And I realized “oh my goodness, we have no brakes.” But of course, other than the reduced speed, not having brakes did not affect the manner in which we drove, we still stopped to pick up every single person waiting on the side of the road b slowing down far ahead of time and then cranking up on the emergency brake.
I have been told that eating a raw garlic clove every day will keep mosquitoes from biting me. I don’t know if I believe it, but I don’t have much to lose at this point. Raw garlic doesn’t taste very good.