Ahhh. Another good day. I feel I’m finally settling in. Although I don’t have a good routine, there’s some semblance of structure to my days. Yesterday stressed me out a bit at first because we were late getting to school, but once there I had a semi-schedule. Pius wanted me to continue working on the exams, but teachers still hadn’t finished marking so I couldn’t do that. Thankfully my buddy Ezekia (the music teacher) was there and I was able to practice some songs with him. Now I have “twinkle twinkle little star” and “happy birthday” under my belt. I spent the rest of the day in music class; I helped make some posters, teach the kids, and organize the room a bit more. I don’t know if it’s a language barrier or just how things work, but at the end of the day I was supposed to meet with a teacher to finally get the graded exams, but he had left school. When Pius helped me contact him he seemed unbothered and said “we’ll just do it tomorrow,” which makes me a bit worried about punctuality at the school (among other issues I’ve observed).
I was worried that once I settled in I would lose the excitement of everything going on, but no! Every day is brand new and brings some new experience that I would never even dream of. For example, yesterday I drove a car for the first time since being over here: We were running late to school and Lucas asked, “you know how to drive, right,” to which I said, “yup,” and off we went. It was so weird steering from the right side of the vehicle and driving on the left side of the road. Im used to a left-right-left intersection check (it’s a good sign that this is my instinct, I never really noticed I do it in the US, but now it’s wrong so I notice it every time) and boy does my head spin when I see cars on the wrong side of the road going to wrong directions. It’s also hard because it’s not just outside where everything is flipped, the interior of the car is also suffering from this spun-around-upside-down effect! The turn signal is on the right hand side of the wheel and its place has been taken by the windshield wipers! And imagine reaching with your left hand to change gears into reverse or drive! It’s fair to say I was a little confused and out of place in that drivers seat, but we made it to school and back safe as can be. It was actually quite lucky I had drove yesterday morning, because after school there was a downpour.
