Less Time and More Problems But At Least I Have Fruit!
March 15, 2012This past week has been rough. My water has not been on for almost 6 days now. I reek, I can’t make most of my food so I have been living off tomatoes and mangos, and I seem to be losing my voice.
My time with my students is quickly running out. If you read my last post then you should recall how stressed out I was thinking that I only until the 28th of this month for the kids to finish their projects. Well, I just found out that classes actually end on the 23rd. That is right, almost a whole week earlier than anticipated. So I am now one huge ball of stress, a ball of stress that is quickly losing its voice and feeling like death. At first, I was rather calm. Two of my groups have finished their videos and one of the others has already finished filming and converting all the files they need to complete theirs. Then I thought of the fourth group, the poverty group, the group that I have not seen for the past 8 or so days. I have not seen once shred of footage from them and none of the other students seem to be able to get them to come to my office hours or class time. They also still have one of the cameras. All I can hope for is that they will show up soon, with enough time to convert the files and edit them into a somewhat cohesive video. So after I managed to calm myself from this cloud of worry, I then discovered that the two videos that are complete would not save into a movie file from Windows Movie Maker because random, tiny parts of the videos are corrupted. Oh what joy. After taking the necessary minute or two to freak out silently I went to work. I slowly went through every single second of one of the videos editing out any sentence, or in some cases entire clips, that were corrupted. Now, one of the videos is fixed without too much footage lost. I can only hope that the other video will be as equally intact when it goes through the same process tomorrow. So, now on to the happy stuff! I got complimented on my pronunciation of “Muea” today. That made me feel pretty awesome I have to say. The taxi driver said I pronounced it like I was born there. I have an overwhelming feeling of pride over this and I am not ashamed to admit it. My students are amazing. I was feeling terrible today and didn’t have much energy or patience for almost anything and they were angels. They all worked quietly, and also played games quietly, while I went to work on fixing their videos. They also must have been as equally frustrated with the footage corruption issue as I was, but did not groan or complain at all when I said that they might have to re-edit if too much footage was lost. I do not recall myself having that much patience and maturity as a child, I even lack it quite often as an adult.Oh, and the fruit here. Oh my god, the fruit here. If you have ever lived in Africa then I am sure you know that the fruit here is the best fruit ever. I have never tasted a mango as good as the ones here. It will be high on the list of things that I will miss when I leave.
Posted by Jessica Wildermuth.
