I suppose many of you have given up reading this journal, but here I am again regaling you with tales of African High Adventure.

One term has finished, leaving me with three to go. Not that I'm obsessively counting, but it is hard to believe how fast the time passes without seasons. Since I've been gone, people have finished whole school years, gotten degrees, and are planning on shifting cities. I realize that this is all everyday stuff for you, but it just seems weird and distant for me. Frankly, so does sitting in an air conditioned internet cafe in a reasonably large (but not very touristy) town. We're here for in-service training, which finished today. Tomorrow, we go back to various cities and villages. I'll be touring some of the country visiting people for a week before returning home.

In school news, I've stopped goofing around in front of class trying to explain concepts without using Swahili. I learned that even with my greatest efforts, the students do not understand what's going on so I mostly teach in my foreign language and write in my native one. At the conference, we learned new ways to do ESL work, which I'm going to try to put into practice; the only problem is that the techniques take a lot of prep work. Hopefully, I'll be able to do what needs doing this coming month when school is off. It will also help that I've switched to teaching only chemistry to reduce my work load.

The classrooms were not finished. Instead of finishing two rooms, four new ones were started. Halfway through their construction, the money ran out. Now we have five partially finished classrooms one with eighty new form I students trying to learn without windows or a door. Money came in pretty fast when they were just loitering around the school grounds, but as soon as they got a roof over their heads people stopped giving. We'll get there eventually, but it is really frustrating.

I don't have much of a life outside of school, though that is slowly changing. Jen returned to America for a few weeks so I went a little crazy. My main coping strategy, making bagels and then eating them with Jen, doesn't work without Jen. The woman who brought my water stopped and her children (one not even in primary school) started bringing it instead. I learned she was pregnant when she gave birth and sent her daughter to tell me. Cultures are different.

Besides teaching with renewed vigor, my plan for my triumphant return to site is to start a time of bio-intensive gardening, which should help people make money, or eat a balanced diet, or something like that. I'm trying to keep my expectations low and remind myself that Rome wasn't built in a day. I guess you'll all have to stay tuned for the exciting outcome of G8: Great Green Garden Grows Good Gobbles Granting Gustation. I am so funny.

The reason I post so infrequently is that the price of internet in my banking town is ridiculously high so I never feel moved to do more than check e-mail. It is less than two bucks an hour, but considering the usual price is less than fifty cents an hour, I feel quite put out.

So much happening, but such an unreliable and expensive internet connection. Maybe things will get better, that belief is why I'm here after all. Keep the letters coming, they are spectacular.