September 10th, 2010
“There must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them. Whenever I’m sad I’m going to die, or so nervous I can’t sleep, or in love with somebody I won’t be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: “I’ll go take a hot bath.”” -The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
I survived my two weeks of serious down time and already my first week of school! Life is going pretty well thus far, though there have certainly been challenges and frustrations. Lack of communication continues to irritate the shit out of me, but I am at least beginning to expect it. Last weekend I went to the market in the neighboring village with my friend Christine and then we went on a mini-hike up a mountain and were rewarded with great views and a beer at a cozy little spot we found with nice people!
I finally have electricity and a table to eat on as well as one to cut vegetables! My house is beginning to resemble a home! Even the red mud that seems to be permanently layering the floor/my feet/everything seems to have dissipated a tad. Last week I threw on my dirtiest clothes and scrubbed the walls of my kitchen and bathroom with a scrub brush to remove its thick coat of dirt. It also removed much of the paint, unfortunately, which caked the entire floor and my entire body in white dust meaning I will most likely die in a few years from lead poisoning. My toilet still isn’t installed, (though- fingers crossed- they are coming to do so in the morning) but at least my aim in the latrine has finally been perfected! I now know exactly how to place my feet so I do not pee all over myself but I can’t say I am going to miss that hole in the ground one bit (figuratively and literally)!
My bathroom also means the prospect of running water in my house which is probably the biggest challenge of life for me here. When you turn the taps in your kitchen, or bathroom sink, or the shower today, please remember that you are lucky as all hell because not only does water unquestionably arrive immediately, but it is safe, clean, and by God, there is even a knob to make it hot instantly! Quelle luxe!
The nearly constant string of visitors I’ve had has made me into a bit of a recluse as I have hesitated to open my shutters some days to possibly deter spontaneous drop- ins. Literally, the other day I lay down after getting home from work and 3 different people stopped by within about 10 minutes. This would probably excite me if they weren’t all awful conversationalists! Most of the time they just stand awkwardly looking off in the distance, not saying anything at all unless I ask questions or start absently talking about the rain or any random thing that comes to mind to distract from the silence. This must be an American necessity- filling that gap of noiselessness, but damn! It’s one I kind of appreciate! It’s one thing to stand around not talking to someone you already know but when it’s a practical stranger stopping by it’s just freaking uncomfortable!
The first week of school was nothing at all like the first week of school in the U.S. Over half of the kids do not even bother to come at all and it seemed fairly optional for me as well. I went, however, and actually taught most of the days, though primarily very basic review things such as “My name is Ms. Caldwell. What is your name?” and the alphabet. I gave an assessment to my classes that I based on the syllabus of the lowest grade in the school and none of the levels did very well on it. Nonetheless, they seem to like me so far and their behavior the first week was far better than that of the students in Bafia. One of my classes is supposed to have 89 students so we will see if they are so easy to manage once all of them are actually present.
I guess the whole concept of making learning fun is kind of new-age or something. Here school is work. It is all about copying notes from the board, drawing perfectly straight lines in your notebook, going unnoticed by not bothering anyone until test time and then regurgitating all those notes you copied. If you fail to make yourself invisible enough you may be forced to kneel on the concrete floor, a form of corporal punishment (supposedly outlawed) which I have already seen this week. I taught for 5 hours yesterday but the time actually flew by because we played Twenty Questions and Hangman, went over the alphabet, discussed grammar points and the kids were engaged,, laughing, participating and they may’ve even been enjoying themselves; I know I definitely was! I hope that I will earn the students’ respect by being strict and serious when necessary but also being fun, cutting them some slack when appropriate, and showing them that school can be enjoyable and without even noticing, they’re actually learning something in the process! When we discussed classroom rules this week, I told them they were not children so they should not behave like children. That, if they do I will treat them as such and otherwise they will be treated like adults. I really do love teaching, I simply hope that in the end I will not face confrontation from the administration because my kids are not learning in their way or at their pace or something of that sort.
Aside from my total comfort in the classroom, there are still some days here I wonder what in the hell I was thinking dreaming all my life of signing up to come to a third world country to help people! Ha! I must be insane! For instance, Wednesday the mason came to pour concrete in the bathroom (finally). Prior to him coming I waited a week before bumping into my landlord in town and asking him about the unfinished and, of late, untouched work to which he acted shocked that it hadn’t already been completed. The technician then came the next day only to inform me that he couldn’t do his work until the mason came and poured concrete first. The following day the mason came, without notifying me, only to find that I was at school. He came the next day again and discovered there were no bags of cement so he couldn’t do the work then either.
That afternoon was our first General Assembly meeting at school, which went well. While there I saw the sous-chef who is also President of the lycee. I told him about the various excuses everyday for the work not getting finished and on his way home from school he organized for them to come that very night. That was the same day I had about a thousand visitors right when I was trying to unwind and all the million kids that live in the house directly behind me came back from the city and were hollering and going wild all over the place. Two teenagers dropped by with my cabinet for my stove and as they were walking out two of my students were dropping by to say hello while about 3 other dudes were walking in and out doing god knows what in my bathroom. Suddenly I needed to get the hell out of dodge and jetted out the front door to go buy tomatoes. Once I’d done that I felt like I should just keep walking to clear my head. It was a beautiful walk- peaceful and forested. I ran into a bunch of students coming home from a soccer match and talked with one of them as we strolled along. I was feeling much better and happy with myself for getting out of that funk, but then suddenly realized I had wandered awfully far and actually didn’t recognize a thing and had no idea where I was. The student I had been talking with arrived to his house and I asked him where to go; he said the intersection I was looking for was just a little further on so I kept walking as the group of students began to disintegrate.
An older boy approached me and started to flirt. We chatted casually a bit as the students marched behind giggling as he was getting shot down. Suddenly it occurred to me I needed to turn the hell around and go back the way I‘d come! He turned to walk back with me and then looked up at an ominous cloud-covered sky and beckoned toward the bar next to where we were standing, encouraging me that we could not walk in a downpour. He was right after all so I went with him and sure enough the rain came just a moment later, drenching the already soggy ground for at least 45 minutes. To my surprise the guy got a phone call and said he had to go but that he was leaving me in the hands of his friend, who happened to be a much more courteous young man (the same age as me, actually) named Frederic who waited out the rain and had a beer on me, and then bought a flashlight so he could walk me all the way to my house only to turn right back around and go home.
Ah, at least I was in my own home and it was quiet and empty. The electricity was out so by candlelight I began to reheat the lentil soup I’d prepared the day before. I was sitting in my room and heard something so I walked out to see what it might be and noticed there was an awfully bright glow coming from the kitchen. I walked in to find that somehow there seemed to be flames coming out of both burners and even the back of the stove, and hopping around on top of it as well, shooting up the back of the new cabinet I’d just arranged a few hours before. My heart pounding and in shock, I quickly glanced around the kitchen and saw that, luckily, there was a half-full bucket of water still on the floor. I doused the entire stove and was panicked when the fire merely flickered a second and kept burning. Suddenly it occurred to me to shut off the gas which immediately ended the mysterious catastrophe. I stood there panting in a puddle of water that was already snaking a trail into my living room and creating gobs of mud everywhere my shoes had dropped dirt from my long lost wandering adventure. Once I caught my breath I began to laugh hysterically; perhaps it was the only way to keep from crying from the day I’d just had and from the sight of my poor, formerly delicious lentil soup and because all the sudden I really felt like a foreigner. And I guess really I just had to laugh because altogether it was, after all, exactly what I signed up for…
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Patientiez
September 2, 2010
“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.” - A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway
It’s been about three months since I left the US. According to Critical Periods in the Life of a Peace Corps Volunteer I should be experiencing “fright, frustration with self, loneliness, weight/health changes, homesickness, and uselessness“. I can’t really claim to be feeling any of those things but I am certainly feeling other emotions which point to my extended time away from home.
I am feeling frustration, but not toward myself. I have been in my house nearly a week. When I visited in July the sous-chef told me the people staying here were working everyday on it and were going to install a toilet and lights before I arrived. Unsurprisingly none of that had happened by the time I got here. I spent a week and a day with the sous-chef and started to think he wasn’t in a huge hurry to get me into my house. Every morning as we drank coffee I drilled him with a dozen questions regarding the progress of the house, coordinating with the school, setting up my language courses, and information on how to get around town. As my interrogations became more routine I became acutely aware of my own cultural obsession with organization and planning as well as their lack thereof.
As I am sitting here, 2 weeks after my arrival to post, there are 2 boys crawling around in my ceiling installing my electricity and though they‘ve dug the floor up in my ‘bathroom‘ and installed a lot of pipes, my toilet is sitting upside-down in my living room at the moment. At least it has felt more like Peace Corps since leaving our chic quartier in Bafia. I’ve spent most nights crouched over my gas stove on the floor with a flashlight in my mouth and have resorted to peeing in a bucket at night rather than bothering to go out in the yard. Luckily I like camping because life pretty much feels like that at the moment.
Water is a huge aggravation and something I will hopefully never again take for granted in my life. The village just got ‘l’eau de robinet’ (tap water) prior to my arrival but unfortunately it is available only at the discretion of the water company and they frequently decide to cut it off for days at a time. Plus, with the work underway at present on the house my running water has been rendered inaccessible, period. My kind neighbor Victorine has offered her barrell of rain water, which is currently dry, or her underground water storage container, which is absolutely filthy, but, better than nothing. Sadly, impure water is probably the number one cause of health problems on the continent and it seems so needless because they are easily avoidable maladies with boiling, filtering, or treating the water before consumption. I have not yet understood why people don’t bother to practice these sanitation habits because at least in the case of Cameroon I don’t think lack of education is to blame. Hopefully at the very least I can serve as a reminder of these easy fixers.
Village life is startlingly more different than life in Bafia than I‘d anticipated. More than likely we were sheltered from a great many realities there, however, because of living in such a more posh area of town. For instance, here people have a very limited sense of privacy. The neighbors will look right in the windows if the shutters are open, or even open them themselves if they are not locked. If the doors are open people just walk in, needing only to utter “konk-konk” while doing so rather than actually knocking and awaiting the invitation. Victorine’s 3 small children are seemingly home alone most of the day most days since I’ve been here while she goes out working in her field and they have all taken to coming to my house and staring at me doing no matter what through the bars of my window for most of the afternoon. They also love to just walk right in if the door is open, though I am trying to steer them away from this habit. We were told we may begin to feel like zoo animals but I had to laugh yesterday when it occurred to me what an accurate analogy that is as I glanced at their 3 little faces staring at me in such wonder as if I was the very first person they‘ve ever seen.
Last week when the sous-chef suddenly informed me we were going to the school I began to follow him out wearing Claude’s soccer shorts and thinking nothing of it when he informed me that I could not do such a thing. I responded in my usual stubborn way at first but he insisted and I was forced to go and change clothes. All the more frustrating that he himself was wearing wind pants and a t-shirt but stated that a woman dressed in such a way would be said to be out in public naked.
A few days ago I walked down the street to pay for my phone credit and bumped into some young guys in the military who said they wanted to buy me a drink, a very common practice to welcome me to the town. Peace Corps encourages us to integrate as much as possible so turning down invitations such as this seems in poor taste. They were all very nice and interesting to speak with. Afterward they offered me a lift back to my house which was about a 5 minute walk up the street. I had them drop me at the sous-chef’s because I needed to buy something anyway and as I got out of the car an older lady I recognized from the compound was saying something to the guys in Patois (mother tongue). When I walked past her she seemed annoyed and angry with me and was mumbling something so I inquired what the problem was. She responded, “Ce n’est pas bien. Tu es la pour le travail, n’est pas?” “That isn’t good. You’re here for work, aren‘t you?” and then seemingly went on to discuss how disgusted with me she was with all the old women at the bar at that particular moment for several minutes.
When I got home I shed several frustrated tears. Despite that my mother is probably reading this and agreeing whole-heartedly with that old bag, it is actually a lot more complicated than it seems. First of all, it was the middle of the day and the whole interaction was perfectly harmless. Of course they turned out to all basically want to date me because it is seemingly impossible to have a platonic relationship with someone of the opposite sex on this continent, but I made it very clear that I was not available in that sense. Overall they were friendly and I accepted the offer of a ride because that is a much less risky gesture than in the States. The old woman apparently saw this car with mostly men and assumed I was whoring around town. The fact that she, who I don’t even know in any way except having maybe greeted her a handful of times, had such a strong opinion that even on a Sunday I should’ve been working instead of being in any situation involving a group of guys was infuriating and made me realize how great it is living in a culture where it is perfectly acceptable to tell someone to mind their own damned business!
My response to her was a light-hearted “Je peux pas travailler chaque jour!” “I can’t work everyday!” but I later informed the sous-chef of the whole story because it had so irritated me. The whole thing was so innocent and casual that for someone I don’t even know to have so much to say about it was maddening! Fortunately the sous-chef sided with me completely on the issue and said it was totally inappropriate for villagers to be concerned about what I’m doing in my personal life. As I described the woman to him he finally said that she is crazy and doesn’t even talk at all to one of his wives because she is so opinionated and has problems with everyone. This made me feel somewhat better but in the back of my mind I felt that she probably did at the very least represent the old fashioned views of some of the people of the community.
Additionally the day after moving into my new house the chef’s (the real chef) wife stopped by and mentioned that I should be staying at my house because it wasn’t good for me to stay so long with the sous-chef and that I would start to cause problems with his wives. This frustrated me as well considering there was certainly no one who wanted me out of his house in a timely fashion more than me and how could I cause so many problems for women who are already sharing a man in the first place when I myself would never agree to such a thing and have a boyfriend of my own! I would add that I am also way too young for the sous-chef and find the very thought of an intimate relationship with him nauseating but it turns out that one of his wives is 2 years younger than me and he married her at 15!
One day on the way into Bafoussam we happened to share a taxi with a very nice man who works at my school. He and the sous-chef started talking about his daughter who had just passed the probatoire, equivalent to becoming a Senior in high school. The sous-chef said she was ripe for marrying now and implied she should marry him. The father of the girl said no way, that he would have to divorce all his other wives first for such a thing to be possible. The sous-chef couldn’t believe he would turn down the proposal of such a prominent figure for his daughter. Finally they arrived on the topic of her being a more suitable match for the sous-chef’s son, an idea they settled on amicably. This entire conversation was a both amusing and sad; a young girl’s future being discussed completely in her absence and without any consideration of how she herself might actually feel about it.
Last night I had a nightmare that school was starting and I showed up 100% unprepared. Not knowing my schedule, not knowing my lessons, and with no clue what to do. As it turns out this wasn’t far from the reality. School starts Monday and so far the only contact I’ve had with school administrators is that which I’ve initiated myself. I was given 4 levels to teach, which is going to be a shit-ton of work. So far I have only 3 of the textbooks, student edition- not the teacher‘s, and have not even seen my actual work schedule. Today I called the discipline master to see about getting a copy of the Schemes of Work which outline broadly the schedule for which material should be presented to the students. He is out of town and said I would get all of that on Monday. I could even show up at 10 am Monday- the first day of school. I cannot get over the absolute lack of preparedness and total calmness about it. The entire student body will be there and that is the day I will find out what times I will be required to come to work and what I will be expected to do. It makes no sense to me and I find it incredibly frustrating. Each time I’ve pressured the staff to give me information it is almost as if they are laughing about my concern over it. They are perfectly content to begin preparations for the year after it has already begun.
I made a new friend the other day just walking down the street. Her name is Linda and unfortunately she lives in the capital and has already gone back. I laughed when she too implied that I didn’t need to stress too much about the first week of classes because that is the week of introductions. A WEEK!? Of introductions!? “Hi, I’m Miss. Caldwell from America and this is English class”; that introduction takes about a minute and then we could actually have class! Now I see why the people in this ‘bilingual’ country do not actually speak English!
Nonetheless, I guess I should try not to worry more than they are worrying. The longer I’m here, the more aware I become with my own “American-ness”. It is pretty fascinating, actually, to see how very different a whole cultural mentality can make a country. It’s like, people don’t connect their being behind with their being totally chill about every single thing. But alas, c’est la vie ici and I guess I’m stuck with it for the next 2 years!
“When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.” - A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway
It’s been about three months since I left the US. According to Critical Periods in the Life of a Peace Corps Volunteer I should be experiencing “fright, frustration with self, loneliness, weight/health changes, homesickness, and uselessness“. I can’t really claim to be feeling any of those things but I am certainly feeling other emotions which point to my extended time away from home.
I am feeling frustration, but not toward myself. I have been in my house nearly a week. When I visited in July the sous-chef told me the people staying here were working everyday on it and were going to install a toilet and lights before I arrived. Unsurprisingly none of that had happened by the time I got here. I spent a week and a day with the sous-chef and started to think he wasn’t in a huge hurry to get me into my house. Every morning as we drank coffee I drilled him with a dozen questions regarding the progress of the house, coordinating with the school, setting up my language courses, and information on how to get around town. As my interrogations became more routine I became acutely aware of my own cultural obsession with organization and planning as well as their lack thereof.
As I am sitting here, 2 weeks after my arrival to post, there are 2 boys crawling around in my ceiling installing my electricity and though they‘ve dug the floor up in my ‘bathroom‘ and installed a lot of pipes, my toilet is sitting upside-down in my living room at the moment. At least it has felt more like Peace Corps since leaving our chic quartier in Bafia. I’ve spent most nights crouched over my gas stove on the floor with a flashlight in my mouth and have resorted to peeing in a bucket at night rather than bothering to go out in the yard. Luckily I like camping because life pretty much feels like that at the moment.
Water is a huge aggravation and something I will hopefully never again take for granted in my life. The village just got ‘l’eau de robinet’ (tap water) prior to my arrival but unfortunately it is available only at the discretion of the water company and they frequently decide to cut it off for days at a time. Plus, with the work underway at present on the house my running water has been rendered inaccessible, period. My kind neighbor Victorine has offered her barrell of rain water, which is currently dry, or her underground water storage container, which is absolutely filthy, but, better than nothing. Sadly, impure water is probably the number one cause of health problems on the continent and it seems so needless because they are easily avoidable maladies with boiling, filtering, or treating the water before consumption. I have not yet understood why people don’t bother to practice these sanitation habits because at least in the case of Cameroon I don’t think lack of education is to blame. Hopefully at the very least I can serve as a reminder of these easy fixers.
Village life is startlingly more different than life in Bafia than I‘d anticipated. More than likely we were sheltered from a great many realities there, however, because of living in such a more posh area of town. For instance, here people have a very limited sense of privacy. The neighbors will look right in the windows if the shutters are open, or even open them themselves if they are not locked. If the doors are open people just walk in, needing only to utter “konk-konk” while doing so rather than actually knocking and awaiting the invitation. Victorine’s 3 small children are seemingly home alone most of the day most days since I’ve been here while she goes out working in her field and they have all taken to coming to my house and staring at me doing no matter what through the bars of my window for most of the afternoon. They also love to just walk right in if the door is open, though I am trying to steer them away from this habit. We were told we may begin to feel like zoo animals but I had to laugh yesterday when it occurred to me what an accurate analogy that is as I glanced at their 3 little faces staring at me in such wonder as if I was the very first person they‘ve ever seen.
Last week when the sous-chef suddenly informed me we were going to the school I began to follow him out wearing Claude’s soccer shorts and thinking nothing of it when he informed me that I could not do such a thing. I responded in my usual stubborn way at first but he insisted and I was forced to go and change clothes. All the more frustrating that he himself was wearing wind pants and a t-shirt but stated that a woman dressed in such a way would be said to be out in public naked.
A few days ago I walked down the street to pay for my phone credit and bumped into some young guys in the military who said they wanted to buy me a drink, a very common practice to welcome me to the town. Peace Corps encourages us to integrate as much as possible so turning down invitations such as this seems in poor taste. They were all very nice and interesting to speak with. Afterward they offered me a lift back to my house which was about a 5 minute walk up the street. I had them drop me at the sous-chef’s because I needed to buy something anyway and as I got out of the car an older lady I recognized from the compound was saying something to the guys in Patois (mother tongue). When I walked past her she seemed annoyed and angry with me and was mumbling something so I inquired what the problem was. She responded, “Ce n’est pas bien. Tu es la pour le travail, n’est pas?” “That isn’t good. You’re here for work, aren‘t you?” and then seemingly went on to discuss how disgusted with me she was with all the old women at the bar at that particular moment for several minutes.
When I got home I shed several frustrated tears. Despite that my mother is probably reading this and agreeing whole-heartedly with that old bag, it is actually a lot more complicated than it seems. First of all, it was the middle of the day and the whole interaction was perfectly harmless. Of course they turned out to all basically want to date me because it is seemingly impossible to have a platonic relationship with someone of the opposite sex on this continent, but I made it very clear that I was not available in that sense. Overall they were friendly and I accepted the offer of a ride because that is a much less risky gesture than in the States. The old woman apparently saw this car with mostly men and assumed I was whoring around town. The fact that she, who I don’t even know in any way except having maybe greeted her a handful of times, had such a strong opinion that even on a Sunday I should’ve been working instead of being in any situation involving a group of guys was infuriating and made me realize how great it is living in a culture where it is perfectly acceptable to tell someone to mind their own damned business!
My response to her was a light-hearted “Je peux pas travailler chaque jour!” “I can’t work everyday!” but I later informed the sous-chef of the whole story because it had so irritated me. The whole thing was so innocent and casual that for someone I don’t even know to have so much to say about it was maddening! Fortunately the sous-chef sided with me completely on the issue and said it was totally inappropriate for villagers to be concerned about what I’m doing in my personal life. As I described the woman to him he finally said that she is crazy and doesn’t even talk at all to one of his wives because she is so opinionated and has problems with everyone. This made me feel somewhat better but in the back of my mind I felt that she probably did at the very least represent the old fashioned views of some of the people of the community.
Additionally the day after moving into my new house the chef’s (the real chef) wife stopped by and mentioned that I should be staying at my house because it wasn’t good for me to stay so long with the sous-chef and that I would start to cause problems with his wives. This frustrated me as well considering there was certainly no one who wanted me out of his house in a timely fashion more than me and how could I cause so many problems for women who are already sharing a man in the first place when I myself would never agree to such a thing and have a boyfriend of my own! I would add that I am also way too young for the sous-chef and find the very thought of an intimate relationship with him nauseating but it turns out that one of his wives is 2 years younger than me and he married her at 15!
One day on the way into Bafoussam we happened to share a taxi with a very nice man who works at my school. He and the sous-chef started talking about his daughter who had just passed the probatoire, equivalent to becoming a Senior in high school. The sous-chef said she was ripe for marrying now and implied she should marry him. The father of the girl said no way, that he would have to divorce all his other wives first for such a thing to be possible. The sous-chef couldn’t believe he would turn down the proposal of such a prominent figure for his daughter. Finally they arrived on the topic of her being a more suitable match for the sous-chef’s son, an idea they settled on amicably. This entire conversation was a both amusing and sad; a young girl’s future being discussed completely in her absence and without any consideration of how she herself might actually feel about it.
Last night I had a nightmare that school was starting and I showed up 100% unprepared. Not knowing my schedule, not knowing my lessons, and with no clue what to do. As it turns out this wasn’t far from the reality. School starts Monday and so far the only contact I’ve had with school administrators is that which I’ve initiated myself. I was given 4 levels to teach, which is going to be a shit-ton of work. So far I have only 3 of the textbooks, student edition- not the teacher‘s, and have not even seen my actual work schedule. Today I called the discipline master to see about getting a copy of the Schemes of Work which outline broadly the schedule for which material should be presented to the students. He is out of town and said I would get all of that on Monday. I could even show up at 10 am Monday- the first day of school. I cannot get over the absolute lack of preparedness and total calmness about it. The entire student body will be there and that is the day I will find out what times I will be required to come to work and what I will be expected to do. It makes no sense to me and I find it incredibly frustrating. Each time I’ve pressured the staff to give me information it is almost as if they are laughing about my concern over it. They are perfectly content to begin preparations for the year after it has already begun.
I made a new friend the other day just walking down the street. Her name is Linda and unfortunately she lives in the capital and has already gone back. I laughed when she too implied that I didn’t need to stress too much about the first week of classes because that is the week of introductions. A WEEK!? Of introductions!? “Hi, I’m Miss. Caldwell from America and this is English class”; that introduction takes about a minute and then we could actually have class! Now I see why the people in this ‘bilingual’ country do not actually speak English!
Nonetheless, I guess I should try not to worry more than they are worrying. The longer I’m here, the more aware I become with my own “American-ness”. It is pretty fascinating, actually, to see how very different a whole cultural mentality can make a country. It’s like, people don’t connect their being behind with their being totally chill about every single thing. But alas, c’est la vie ici and I guess I’m stuck with it for the next 2 years!
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