1,000 hail marys

The week went by really fast and I teach 9 times a week now so that makes time fly. I teach twice a week at the technical school, twice a week at the literacy center (not to the illiterate people, but to the people learning how to use computers there), and 5 times a week with the boarding school girls. Those are a lot less structured and its kind of annoying because I have to like round them up and make them come to ‘class’. Its an extra hour that they have to be in school so I probably wouldn’t want to go either, but still its annoying.

Sometimes the girls look painfully bored until the end of the hour when they start asking me questions about my life and are suddenly enthralled. Its funny when they ask if Im married because when I say no they keep looking at me like they’re waiting for some explanation because 22? Single? Spinster. Might as well be a hoarder with 15 cats.

Thursday one of the priests came over and wanted me to make signs for a ceremony thing that happened last night. It was a vigil where they said 1,000 hail marys for peace but at the beginning they had girls carry in these signs that said ‘no to war’ ‘no to xenophobia’ etc. The priest asked me to make the signs not knowing that I have the handwriting of a 7 year old boy and that this type of project takes me hours. So Friday afternoon I spent several hours doing block letters that would most people could do in 10 minutes. I was running out of time so I had the boarding school girls color the ‘no’ red on the signs while I finished the others.

When I went to check on the signs the girls were doing they had colored the ‘no’ red, but then tried to color the other letters blue. The marker ran out and so one of the signs had half of one word blue and the other black. Then the red marker ran out when we were doing the last ‘no’. We ended up being able to finish that one and I thought that they looked fine.

Wrong. When the ceremony started each girl walked down the aisle with a sign and they were the worst signs ive ever seen. The spacing was terrible, some letters were thick and others were thin and somehow one of the ‘no’s was only half colored. The sign with the word that was half-blue was a disgrace and on another sign I misspelled ‘tribalism’. (Stupid mistake because everyone knows that in French ‘tribalism’ has an ‘e’ on the end) It was terrible. Luckily part of the ceremony was burning the signs. I was embarrassed, but the signs were ugly to the point of actually being hilarious. To me anyway, but maybe not to the priest who unknowingly assigned an art project to someone so inept.

After my art work was incinerated the hail marys started. I left after a few hours, but sr Yvette stayed the whole time and was there until 5am! Yikes. Sr Vicky goes ‘that’s not prayer. That’s torture’. Shes pretty hilarious.

So things are going well and time is going a lot faster and the language is getting easier. That said I am absurdly excited to come home for Christmas which is very soon! At that time I will be uploading more pictures than you could ever want to see.

Thanks for reading!