Ca y est

So, there we have it, I am home, having swapped the burning sun and 80% humidity of Guyane for the decidedly grayer but equally heavy atmosphere of summertime in Columbus, Ohio.

Thus concludes my 10 months in French Guiana, a 10 months that I have yet to fully digest and may not for a while to come. When faced with the return from a period of time in a foreign country like this, we are often asked to sum up our experience succinctly and simply… “it was great” … “i loved it” … “yes, i learned a lot.” But really, we are asking ourselves…what the HELL just happened? Where was I for the past 10 months, and why? And was it really as great/mediocre/awful as I am telling people it was?

Well, I can tell you that I am immensely grateful for my time in Guyane. I use the word grateful because I feel this is a place that I never, ever, would have experienced had certain forces not come into play; had certain decisions not been made. I didn’t choose specifically to go to Guyane–it was chosen for me–and I accepted, with absolutely no idea what to expect. And I couldn’t be happier with every bit of the uncertainty that I felt, and the discovery that followed.

And yet still so much more to discover. I feel like I barely dipped my foot in the water. It goes without saying that French Guiana is an incredibly unique place, made even more unique for me personally by the fact that there are so few tourists there, let alone Americans. Do I have a chip on my shoulder for having lived, survived in this strange country ? Not hardly . . . because despite its astounding multiethnicity and diversity, I was as exotic in Guyane as it was to me, and trying to blend in was a pursuit best left to the real chameleons. Not to say that I don’t think I could ever fit in–in a small town like St. Laurent, you become part of the scenery after 9 months. But to really settle in…to learn the life, to be accepted…to make Guyane one’s home…it takes years, of course. And I wonder if I could ever do it…how (and why) any of the real expatriates do it…for Guyane, you have to be a little crazy.

To backtrack a bit, my parents had a very good visit–I’m not going to deny that it stressed me out loads to work out the logistics of getting them through all the steps to get to St. Laurent and back relatively hassle-free–but everything worked out just fine. We managed to see a lot in the 6 days they were in the country, and my parents took everything in with eyes wide open, never once overwhelmed but often agog at the wealth of sights and stories. They saw where I slept, worked, and rode my bike, where I bought my food, where I hung out, where I went to swim, where I went to run, the places I used to live…and then some. We went to Mana, the small and very charming Creole town, then to Awala-Yalimapo, the Amerindien village and nature reserve and nesting site of giant sea turtles…to Javouhey, village of the Hmongs, who, once they staggered down the path from a wedding celebration that occupied the entire village, took us down the Acarouany river to camp at a beautiful site in the forest alongside some noisy Hmong teenage hunters…we saw Apatou, bushinenge village only recently accessibly by car (before, only by pirogue), with its tiny houses clustered together and village life becoming urbanized…we took a boat tour of the Maroni and visited tiny Amerindien and Bushinenge villages in Suriname and felt like awkward white invaders…we saw some of the creeks, had a long forest tour complete with explanations of trees, plants, and hunting traps…we ate poulet-frites at the Charbonniere and roti at the market…and found time to take some traditional Guianese naps in between.

My last few days in Guyane were bittersweet, knowing that I’d soon be leaving and perhaps never coming back. I tried to stay busy, not wanting to linger too much on goodbyes of any sort. I went and saw at least 10 giant Luth (leatherback) sea turtles nesting on the beach in Awala and two nest hatchings of baby turtles, scrambling out of the sand and skittering towards the sea…Took another boat tour on the Balate creek in last hopes of seeing a sloth but wasn’t so lucky in that respect. Went camping for two days, taking a canoe up the Crique Serpent to a small rapids–didn’t see another soul–caught my first big fish and heard howler monkeys at night…Ate one last roti at the market…bought some last souvenirs (books about Guyane), packed up my stuff (left a lot behind), and headed off to Paramaribo, where Melvin and Emily were waiting for me.

And so, after a long and tiring but uneventful trip from Paramaribo to Columbus, I find myself back where I was 10 months ago, wondering if the whole thing wasn’t just a bubble of sorts. It will take time, of course, to integrate my experiences, to accept that my time in Guyane was indeed part of my “real” life…and to figure out where to go from here…

It’s over!! Ahh!!! No more school!

This is the end, my friends…of my job that is. I know that I haven’t updated in a while but honestly things have been pretty boring. No excuse though, as I write about plenty of boring things on here. Last week on Tuesday I had my last day at the middle school and today I had my last day at the primary school where I teach 3 classes. All that’s left is Friday, my last day (i.e. 45 minutes) at the other primary school, and it will be OVER. It’s hard to believe but strangely unaffecting at the same time…I’ve been looking forward to the end of work for such a long time (gotta be frank here) and I always thought that once it arrived I would be jumping for joy and racing around St. Laurent naked waving a flag or something. My last days at the college and primary school elicited neither this reaction nor the opposite—I wasn’t sad, either. I kind of just felt like ‘Oh. It’s over…ok.’ It definitely has something to do with the atmosphere of the end of the year, too. Everyone’s ready to be done and just kind of dragging out till the end, and the kids are definitely at the end of their motivation and attention-span rope – not that they had much to begin with. I was sort of planning on doing a little speech to each class, saying something like, ‘Well, you’ve been a good class, we’ve had a good year, continue your efforts, English is important, blah blah blah’, while they listened rapt-eyed and then came up to tell me how much they would miss me. It ended up being more like a whirlwind of:’ here’s some juice, here are some cookies, jesus Christ not all at once, yes I’ll take some videos of you dancing to Michael Jackson, ok bye bye good vacation thanks!’

That’s fine though—honestly I don’t know why I ever would have expected the first scenario anyway. These kids are so used to teachers coming for a short time and taking off. And I definitely don’t take illusions that I was some shining beacon of American knowledge that they couldn’t wait to have class with! The ones that profited profited, the ones that didn’t didn’t, and they all will have forgotten all of their teachers’ existence as soon as the last bell of the last day of school rings……summer vacation.

This past Monday we finally received (at the primary school) the test booklets for the national evaluation in English. These National Evaluations are tests (they have them in every subject) a bit like CAT or proficiency tests—standardized things to compare levels across the whole country. However, not nearly every primary school in Guyane has English teachers so only the classes that have been taking English this year took the test. For example at one of my primary schools, there are probably 12 different classes, 3 of which had English this year. Anyway, as I was the kids’ official English teacher it became my responsibility to administer the exam and correct it, which was a pain in the ass. The exam was actually not too bad—it was really long though, with a 38 minute listening section and a 20 minute writing section. To recap, I found out about 2 weeks ago that there would be a national evaluation in English, and I found out also that there is a national curriculum for English as a foreign language that no one had told me about and thus I had not been following. We received the booklets for the exam they day before the exam was to be given, so I was able to do a really quick cram session with each class (i.e. giving them the answers for every word they hadn’t learned with me over the course of the year, which was thankfully not as many as I thought). In the end though, it really wasn’t fair, because had I known what they were expected to learn this year, I would definitely have taught it. And it wouldn’t have been necessary for me to pull lesson material out of my ass, but I have to say I did a pretty damn good job in that respect.

These evaluations made me realize too even more how relatively the level of writing and reading is among school kids here. And I’m talking about in French, not necessarily in English. A lot of kids just have trouble understanding test instructions in French and so they get stuck trying to respond to questions. When you see their writing it’s obvious that a lot of them learned to write and read pretty recently and they still write a lot of things phonetically. It’s frustrating because you know of course they would understand if you explained it to them in their language, but they are in French school and thus have to speak, write and understand French. They don’t speak French at home or amongst their friends, so the only time they use it is during school with the teacher. The war in Suriname in 1992 caused a huge influx of immigrants to the nearest point across the river—St. Laurent. The generation of kids that are in schools now are going to be the last generation of kids whose parents did not go to French school (either they went to school in Suriname or not at all). In 10 years things will be very different.

SOOO, on the agenda now is preparing for my dear parents to come! They are arriving the 6th in Paramaribo and staying for 6 days before flying out on the 13th. A very short visit but we should be able to cram in some interesting things.

this is the finalll countdown

God this internet is painfully slow. Je-zus.

So this past weekend was a big weekend–well it was a 3 day weekend for one thing and also a 4 day ‘stage’ (workshop) for capoeira finishing in the ‘bapteme’ ceremony on saturday night. A bapteme (baptism) for capoeira has nothing to do with religion, but it is a ceremony where several capoeira masters from outside the capoeira group are invited and each person in the group plays against the masters and receives a capoeira cord colored to correspond to their level. It’s like an initiation and a passage of levels, sort of like in karate i guess. So starting last Wednesday our capoeira group had a 3 hour workshop every day with 4 capoeira masters, 2 from brazil and 2 from france. It was pretty cool and I was happy that I did it, and now I have a yellow-and-white cord, which is the first level but hey, it’s quite good enough for me!

This weekend was also my good friend Sarah’s last weekend in Guyane, so there was plenty of partying to be done to celebrate the bapteme and her departure. She is back in good old Angleterre now, leaving me to realize that I too will be leaving soon, as I have been repetitively saying on here for what seems like forever. The above song got in my head yesterday when I was counting the number of classes I have left at the collège until I leave. Since I see half the class at a time, I only have about 2 more sessions with each group from each class before I leave. And one of those sessions will definitely be a little going away party, i.e. I am going to play rap music and we’ll eat peanut butter and jelly or something.

Can’t wait for work to be over; I really don’t see myself missing it at all. I need to start planning for my parents’ visit out here, it will be here before we know it!

Also got word a week ago that my new passport is ready so I’ll be going as soon as is most convenient during the week to Parbo to pick it up and reapply for my visa etc.

Emily leaves this weekend for Maripasoula!!

update on passport n stuff

So this past Tuesday I went to Paramaribo to apply for my new passport at the American Embassy. Originally I was pretty set on going as soon as possible after getting robbed, but it took a while to get the necessary paperwork to be able to cross the border without problems, and Thursday and Friday were official holidays, which made it more convenient, I guess, to go ahead and miss work anyway on Wednesday. I left Tuesday afternoon and my appointment at the Embassy was on Wednesday morning. The section that processes passport applications is only open Mondays and Wednesdays from 8 am to 10 am, hence the bizarre middle-of-the-week trip. There were a lot of people waiting in the room in the Embassy but after I explained my situation they called me up to the window a few minutes later. Although the fine print on the passport application states otherwise, apparently you could only pay for the passport in US dollars, which necessitated a frenzied 45 minute trajectory around the nearby streets to find a cambio that changed Euros into USD. I did find one in time, but by the time I got back to the Embassy the consulate was in a meeting and I had to come back an hour and a half later. The meeting was pretty short and easy, I just turned in my lost/stolen passport form, the passport application, and copies of all the existing paperwork I have, and paid the $100 fee. The Consulate told me that the passport would be ready in a WEEK (!!) and that I would have to come back to Paramaribo to pick it up so that I could apply for a new Suriname visa and get entry/exit stamps from the military police. So miraculously everything went smoothly, despite scrambling to get translations and letters sent by Tuesday afternoon and the usual dysfunctions (entire phone/internet connection cutting out in St. Laurent for a day when I needed to call the Embassy, ATMs not accepting my American bank card, French bank card stolen, bank temporarily closed, etc etc). Still not sure if I need to re-do all the French mess (titre de sejour, visa for 9 months) but according to the Consulate in Parbo, I don’t need any of that stuff to fly back to the States.

Emily and I have both been keeping a sort of D-day countdown to the end of our contracts. Emily, however, was able to snag a job in Maripasoula (village in Southern Guyane only accessible by plane or a 4-day boat trip)as a contractual teacher for the month of June! She is leaving in two weeks so I am already thinking about plans to go visit her. Laura, a British assistant from Cayenne, is already there and will be until end of June as well. So anyway, there are about 6 and a half more weeks left in our contracts, and in terms of work, frankly I can’t wait for them to be over. I hardly work at all as it is, our contracts are only 12 hours a week after all, but I’m ready for it to be done. As far as leaving Guyane, though, I am not so ready. I was looking through my pictures from the very beginning the other day and was taken aback by how much has changed and how we have really established our little lives here but soon it will be over. It’s going to be weeee—irrd. But then I Skype with my family and I see my parents’ house and our dog and I can so easily imagine myself just lying around on the couch there like I always do. I’m excited for my parents to come out here—hopefully they have done some research on those plane tickets, ahem ahem!! I think it will help for them to see what it’s like here, I feel like there are so many things that you can’t really communicate. Plus they will be here during the DRY SEASON!! Let’s just say that the second rainy season (April to beginning of July) is not a good time for tourism…or anything, in general. I am prett-y tired of riding my bike in the rain…the stagnant pools of water everywhere…the hordes of mosquitoes, moths, flies, cockroaches…and just rainy nastiness in general.

Anarchy and bureaucracy

The more time I spend here the more I realize that Guyane is a strange mixture of anarchy and French bureaucracy. I haven’t traveled a lot; I can’t rightfully compare this country to many other places, but in my experience this what I’ve found. It’s a country of paradoxes and mixtures—really the jungle is a good symbol for all aspects of the place. There are things that are beautiful and things that are ugly and vines twine around it all. It’s so dense that you kind of just flounder through, unless you really know what you’re doing. And it’s humid.

Most of the police here come on contracts of 3 months, shipped straight from metropolitan France and itching to leave as soon as they set feet here. Many of the teachers are young, white French who, upon passing their concours, were forced to choose between Guyane or rough Parisian banlieues to earn enough seniority in their jobs to eventually land in the academy they want (weird point system). Most others are young, white French who work as contractuels—they don’t have teaching licenses, or job security. Just on either side of the customs point for passing over to Suriname are well-known takeoff points for illegal entry and exit. There are 12 different languages spoken originating from noir marron ethnic groups, numerous Amerindian languages, several Creoles, various Asian languages including Chinese and Javanese, and French. Many children starting school in St. Laurent don’t speak much French, if any, and they certainly never speak it at home. Some children go to work at the abattis (family slash-and-burn agriculture plots) on the weekends and some go to Cayenne to go shopping. Tucked away in clusters throughout the city are tiny shanty-towns, shacks cobbled together from scrap wood and tin, often with no electricity or water. One of the most infamous French prison camps is located just downtown , and now concerts are thrown in the space. This is just 20-odd years after Surinamese refugees squatted in the former transportation camp buildings to escape the war across the river.

Point being, it’s a place of contradiction. It’s a small town and very tranquille on the surface, but its proximity to Suriname and exploding young population contribute to the sense of chaos. The more stories you hear, the more people you meet, you discover some of the things that go on beneath the surface.

Why am I expounding on all this … stuff? Well, after a poorly-planned (transportation-wise) outing to a concert last Wednesday turned into me riding my bike home relatively late at night (a bit before midnight)by myself and unfortunately getting yanked off my bike and robbed in the middle of the street. Sounds scary, and it was, but I got really lucky in that the group of boys (6-7 of them), of whom 2 took my bike and my bag, moved away from me after taking my stuff. After a short breathless jog toward the town center, which was dead except for lurkers-around, I very quickly happened upon a French militaire in a giant 4×4 who immediately burned rubber to try and find the robbers. We saw them with my bag and bike, they got scared and ran, and a neighbor found my bike just minutes later on a path. No bag though. I was shaken up but thankful to be fine and that nothing of importance was in the bag. So I thought. After going back twice to search the bush, careful retracing of my steps mentally and tearing apart the house I realized that my passport had indeed been in the bag. Yuh-yoh. The police report’s been filed, and bank card reapplied for, and I’m awaiting advice from the American Consulate in Paramaribo on how to legally cross the border to go apply for a replacement passport. Unfortunately, I have also thus lost my Surinamese visa, my French 9-month visa, and my titre de sejour (work permit). Good thing I made copies of absolutely everything. I hope it will help me. Will relay the next bits of information as they come.

Pictures

Public link to an album of pictures I just posted: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2760279&id=12400975&l=4c9b4a936b

Post-long-vacation blargs.

Going back to work last Monday after a 15 day vacation was deeeefinitely not fun, especially at 730 am in the morning. The week was very hectic and nonstop, it seemed like there were a million little things to take care of, things around the house and things for school, and having done absolutely no preparation for class during the vacation, well, that didn’t help. I found the kids to be more agitated than well-rested after their long vacation, and several of their teachers mentioned having the same impression. Hopefully this week will be a little better, at the primary school today it seemed a bit more calm.

I feel like all I ever write about on here is my vacations, so I’ll spare the big rundown…I did a good deal of moving around, but all places I have been before–went to Cayenne, Paramaribo, Kourou, Isles du Salut–but it was all very nice and relaxing. More of a social-based vacation than a nature-based vacation like the last one, what with several friends of roommates and such coming to visit from the States and from France, so it was cool to see their first impressions of Guyane. There are a lot of little things that you just forget and get used to after a while…I was making a little list in my head after spending a couple days with Emily’s good friend Leah who came to visit for a week from New York. I was thinking about:

-Having basically no light in the neighborhood–using a little headlamp or flashlight to go out at night…how our neighborhood looks in general…all the houses that are unfinished, all the clothes drying on top of peoples’ gates, all the little kids in the street, the potholes and stagnant water…

-The taxi men in Paramaribo, 10 at a time hustling you and grabbing your bags and then making you wait an hour while they negotiate for more passengers…how fast they drive, how shitty the road is, their music…

-Hearing the local languages and having no idea what people are saying

-The fact that all the little stores have chinese names and are run by chinese people

Those are just a few of the things that I was thinking about, I am sure that I could think of much much more. A good project to do before I leave.

Most of what I have been thinking about (and grinding my teeth over) lately is the general crappiness of this job and the people who are (supposed to be) involved in it. The man who is ‘in charge’ of us, Manuel de Lima, the Inspecteur des Langues for the Rectorat (ie, big important cheese in Guyane), is to say the least rather corrupt and unprofessional and overall doesn’t really get shit done for any of us, unless you count personal favors for his favorite assistants that live in Cayenne. I realize I am putting this opinion out there on the internet, publicly, and it’s possible for M. de Lima or someone else important to find it. At this point, I really don’t care. I feel like it’s more important for people to know the truth…whoever…not like anyone really reads this thing, but if they do. There’s a lot that I could write on here that I won’t, at least not yet, maybe I’ll save it for my book that my grandmother is going to help me write (right Nini??). Next down the chain are our référents, the people who work in the cities where we are placed, at the establishments we work at, who were chosen to be our references for the job and kind of be a liason between us and our establishments. I think. I dont really know. It might be a volunteer position, but even so it makes them look good on paper.

Everyone has two referents, and mine both turned out to be pretty much nonexistant–the one who lodged me for a week when I first got here was pretty helpful and in contact with me (i work with one of her classes anyway) for the first two months, then she basically stopped talking to me. Important to note though that she has been pregnant, had some complications, and is now on maternity leave and not coming back till September. Got no warning from her when she was leaving, or who was replacing her, what to do with her class, or if I had a replacement referent, though. My other referent, who is in charge of my primary school liasons, was very helpful the first two weeks–had lunch with me, took us to Cayenne for the orientation that never happened, helped me find my first place to live–has been since pretty much completely unreachable and never returned my calls or emails. I see her sometimes at my primary schools (she works as a pedagogical counselor) and sometimes she doesn’t even say hi.

Next down the chain are the ‘chefs d’établissement’ (principals and adjoint principals etc) and then the main teachers. Most of the chefs d’établissement are people I very rarely see and as for the one at the collège, I don’t think she even knows who I am. We have met once. The teachers, i.e. the people who I work with at the collège and people in whose classes I intervene in the primary schools, are just as confused as I am as to what my job is supposed to be, how I am supposed to do it, and why. It’s likely that some of them have had english assistants before in their classes, but that definitely doesn’t mean anything. I really can’t blame my colleagues though–they experience all the same problems as I do, they just work more hours, have more responsibility, and their jobs are taken a little bit more seriously. The last worry they have is what the English assistant is up to, they’re just glad that you’ll take half their class off their hands once a week.

Anyway, bitch, bitch, moan, moan, I know. For the amount of hours we assistants in Guyane work we are paid well, but I can say with certainty that we are not taken care of. In two weeks time, the assistants with 7 month contracts will be done and leaving Guyane without ever having had the health insurance and social security they were promised and that was taken out of their paychecks every month. Most of us will probably never get paid for the supplementary hours that we work for various établissements unless we diligently hunt down the paperwork and write numerous courriers and cross our fingers and toes for the next year.

I have a French friend that has realized the bullshittery of this whole mess and the extent to which no one really gives a shit about our jobs, however peu important they may be, and has explained to me that in order to light a fire under people like Manuel de Lima’s ass, you have to go through the official hierarchy and play the official French way: writing very official-sounding letters that you send to every person involved in the feeding chain and keep pestering the people you sent them to until something happens due to accumulated professional pressures. As daunting and useless as this task may seem I guess its the only recourse at this point, and my friend had a good point: People here dont’ give a shit and they won’t do shit if you go to them and try to talk it out. That forces them to do nothing and you have no proof of anything. You have to work through the system because the system is the only thing they know can get them in trouble.

I just want people to know what’s going on. I realize that the job of a language assistant is probably about as relevant and important in the grand scheme of things as the latest American Apparel ad, probably less so, but if I can at least help things go a little more smoothly for one lonely little future assistant, I want to do it, by gum!!!!!!

Very quick almost end of vacation update

Hello, any faithful readers that havent given up on me due to lack of posts/lack of interesting posts! I have just gotten back into St Laurent after spending four days in Kourou at the Isles du Salut (same place I went last vacation). I have been a bit all over the place this vacation–some time in Kourou, some time in Cayenne, some time in Paramaribo–and it feels strange to be back in the STL. Given, this has been a long vacation–two weeks in fact–and I do not feel at all prepared to go back to work.  Guyane is an increasingly strange place and I am reminded of this each time I have vacations and then am faced with going back to my daily routine.

I will be updating again shortly with a recap of my vacances and other strange ongoings that have happened in the last couple weeks…time seems to be stretching out rather than compressing, but for those assistants who have 7 month contracts, the end is a mere 3 weeks away…….

Pictures to come too.  A très bientot…

You guessed it…

…On vacation again!! Surprise, surprise.

Nothing prévu for this vacation, which is a bit of a shame because it’s a long one–two whole weeks not counting the weekends. Good lord! What am I going to do? I have some options…sticking around Guyane and doing some more forest trips…trying to go to Brazil with some of the other assistants…going to suriname with Emily and her friend who is coming to visit…or taking off by myself to Tobago…at the moment I do not have much desire to go on a solo vacation, though. I don’t know. French people are so good at planning their vacations ahead of time, why can’t I be like that? Not enough money, not enough organization.

Things have been going alright, I am glad that it is vacation time because work has been getting a bit stressful; life in general I guess has been getting a bit stressful, I feel that I can’t really elaborate right now…anyway hopefully this vacation will at the last be relaxing.

I got this letter today from one of my favorite students in one of my primary school classes. She came up and handed it to me after I said goodbye to the class.

“Dear Renata,

I am writing you this letter because I want to tell you something very important. I am a Jehovah’s Witness and I want you to get to know Jehovah because I do not want you to die at Armageddon. I am going to give you the Watchtower and you promise me that you will say yes. –Arlette.”

Oh boy. There are a lot of Jehovah’s Witnesses here, and I kind of had a feeling that she might be one, but she had never said anything to me about it until now. This will be an awkward conversation. Not sure exactly how to go about it, hopefully she’ll just let me take the watchtower and then leave me alone about it, but I doubt it.

Kids in primary school have been driving me nuts lately, actually moreso the teachers. There are a couple teachers who have just been leaving while I am there with the class, which they are not supposed to do. I mean, leave me, a mere assistant, only speaking English, with 25 nine year olds who are used to always having their teacher in the room? Recipe for chaos. What was once my favorite class has turned into a real headache because their teacher started just leaving to go do whatever every time I have class with them. I need to have a talk with the teachers, for sure. Will save that for after vacation though.

AHH!! Boring!!

Oh my goodness! I totally agree with Emily S.’s comment on my last post: Boring!! When are you going to update?

I take full responsibility (i guess) for the mind numbing boringness of my blog as of late–Good lord, I haven’t posted since the last vacation, and there are only 2 weeks until the NEXT vacation! But come on, guys, it’s France! There’s a vacation every time you turn your head.

Things have been going decently in the kingdom of Guyane: Namely in the realm of work and weather. The rainy season proved to be little more than several 3-day spurts of nonstop downpour–for the most part, we have been spared and kept relatively dry. I’ve only had to hoof it to work on my bike in my gigantic embarassing poncho about 3 or 4 times, and I have mastered the art of holding an umbrella while steering the bike with one hand. Either way, rainy season is apparently over, and now we are in the ‘petit été de Mars’ (little summer of March) which basically just means things are exactly the same but even hotter. True.

Work has been going well because I have refreshed my attitude (and my attendance) and realized that being positive does indeed help, even if not all the time. I’ve been working with more of my middle school kids on songs: for example, Michael Jackson’s “Will You Be There” and Soulja Boy’s “Kiss Me Through the Phone”. I print out the lyrics but insert blanks for the kids to try and fill in while they listen, then we go through section by section and translate. They get a big kick out of it when they realize how simple it is to translate lyrics like “I miss ya, I miss ya, I really wanna kiss ya” and it seems to drum up some enthusiasm. Next Thursday at the middle school is the ‘Festival of Languages’ so we are working on a couple of performances of American songs for the occasion, which the kids are really excited about. Primary school is going well also, and my ateliers (two per week with adults and one per week with a group of primary kids) are giving me some opportunities to do some fun, more relaxed activities (i.e. watching Shrek).

As I mentioned the next vacation will be here in 2 weeks. I don’t have any plans yet–I keep checking Orbitz.com for miraculously cheap flights to some deserted island paradise, but I haven’t found anything yet. My roommate Freddy is hoping to buy a car before vacation and I’ve told him I will go half on it with him (it should be about 750 euros per person), so my vacation funds will be very limited if this goes through but at least I might have a way to get somewhere. I know I can survive 4 more months without a car, but the thought of having one just for weekends and vacations is extremely tempting, and I want to take advantage of all the things there are to do here in Guyane. After seeing, during the last vacation, how easy it is to travel and stop at little creeks and hiking spots, I really want a car even more.

Crazy to realize this, but for the majority of assistants their time in Guyane is almost over. The majority of the assistants in Guyane have 7 month contracts, which are up at the end of April. The rest of us are working until the end of June. It’s not that big a difference but April is almost here, and that is very weird to think about. I guess it will be here before we know it–that’s always the way it works.

Well I’ve got to be getting to class–my lovely Friday afternoon troisième DP6 remedial class, (15 yr olds) where three girls are pregnant and the entire class is spent shouting at eachother in taki taki, listening to mp3 players, smacking eachother on the head with random objects, and hitting on the English assistant.

More to come.