Happy New Year!
I am excited to announce that I have an office now! I even have an office mate, Alex, which makes having an office not so lonely. I have a tendency to spread out and he is amazingly forgiving! I have been really struggling for space here especially after having a large classroom for so many years. I really needed a place to call my own and with my dissertation starting this month, I had to have a place to keep confidential information. I have a phone and computer on my desk. The phone is actually to connect my Vonage device so that I can make and receive calls from the U.S. If you want to give me a call, my number is 314-260-7785. If I am not in my office, the number forwards to my local cell phone. I pay $10 a month for unlimited calling, so it is an awesome deal! I am the only one who picks up the phone, so don't hesitate to call me! However, keep in mind that I am nine hours ahead (CST), so I won't answer your call in the middle of the night.
There are people in our lives that make our job easier. I have three. They are our office assistants: Lydia, Kazozi, and Dorothy. They are amazing. They clean our offices, close our windows, empty the trash, make copies, get food, and generally do anything and everything we ask. One of my favorite things they do is cleaning my coffee cup. I drink coffee and leave my cup on my desk. Magically, it appears the next day...clean! This might not seem like a big deal to you, but it is huge to me!
I had a faculty board meeting today and on my way there, we saw many monkeys playing around. I think the mangos are getting ripe, which usually causes them to rummage through the trees. I am fascinated by them, but people here think they are a nuisance. I knew this difference in our views, but Alex reiterated it today when he said, "Ugh, those are so annoying!" I am still totally fascinated by them!
I have the pleasure of teaching "recess" classes for the last three weeks. These students are actually teachers who are working on their Bachelor's in Education during the holiday time. They come in January, May, and August when their schools are on break. During this module, I taught Writing and Study skills. These pictures are students discussion an article that I gave them from our English Forum magazine how to incorporate more "student" talk as opposed to "teacher" talk. They came up with very good and practical ideas.
Every class has a class leader who communicates information to the class from the lecturer, straightens the room, picks up copies, passes out papers, etc. For this particular class, our leader is Anthony and he is AMAZING! He provides supplies for me and makes sure the room is ready for class.
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| Anthony and I |
The coordinator the program, Daniel, works very hard to make sure all students are successful. I caught him just before he was heading to class.
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| Daniel Omaya |
There are not many food places I recognize in Uganda and fast food is non-existent. So, imagine my excitement when one of my friends told me we were getting a KFC. I didn't believe him, so I told him if they were actually opening a KFC, I would buy him lunch. Guess what? It was true! So, we set off to have KFC a few weekends ago.
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| Kizito and I |
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| The bottom bones are mind, the top are Kizito's! He licked his clean! |
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| So excited about ice cream!! It was delicious! |
I work in two departments: Foundation Studies (FS) and Languages & Literature. Foundation Studies is like the core coursework we have at the university level. I think we might refer to them as per-requisites. The FS department is entirely comprised of part-time lecturers. We have a meeting every Monday morning and it is one of my favorite times during the week. We gather together, have a devotional, and listen to department announcements. The people in this department are truly a joy and amazing to work with day in and day out. We actually went on a writing workshop this past weekend, but that is for another post!
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| Paul and Solomon hard at work...or hardly working? |
I guess that is all for now. You are all caught up with most of the things happening in my life. I will make two more posts this week about my latest article and the workshop we had in Jinja. Hope you are all well.
