March 14, 2008

So I hope things are going well there. I saw on the weather report today that you guys in MO should be getting some good old spring thunder storms this weekend! It was super foggy and sprinkled on and off all day today. I woke up around 11:30am since I didn’t have to work today. Got dressed and made myself some breakfast. And since nobody was home I watched CNN and BBC (the only shows in English) while I enjoyed my oatmeal with yogurt and hot tea. The yogurt was a big a treat. They don’t usually buy it since it is so expensive. Not to mention there was farm fresh milk today. I think my body went into shock with the all the dairy I consumed today.
I made a few phone calls for the committees I am on and then decided I was tired and should take a little nap. I know, but, I might as well since I can. At home I used to joke how nice it would be not to get out of bed because it’s a rainy day well, here some days I can actually do that. Or not to mention if it is a nice spring afternoon and I don’t feel like working well then fine, I think I’ll go for a nice walk. But as it might sound like your dreams have come true I can’t say that it is always so great. With all that does come some mental and emotional strain. I don’t know that I’ll ever get used to the working hours of my office. When you are used to running around with your head cut off for 8-12 hours a day and then not having complete chaos it is a big adjustment. I like the craziness of having 110 things to due by the end of the day. Sure there might be some organizations in this country that function more like what I am used to but that surely isn’t the organization that I am at.
Things are very slowly changing at my office. At least now that it has started to warm up we have been going to the office more often. We are working on developing some projects to help improve the local schools. From what I have learned most of the teachers don’t really have any real training to become teachers. They don’t know how to keep control of their classes. The students are not taught the basic life skills in class like we are throughout the course of our schooling. You may be thinking why any of this is relevant, but think about. When you are in a classroom that is disruptive, how much are you actually learning? Yeah sure our parents taught use basic life skills over the course of lives, but they also learned about those things in school and we continue to learn about those things in school. Sure in some areas people have general information about the basics of hygiene, eating habits, exercise, drugs, sex, and diseases but most regions don’t have this information or don’t know how or are afraid to teach it. If they talk about certain topics then that means there is a problem and well there just aren’t any problems. Sure there was a point in time in America when we didn’t talk about certain topics because they weren’t socially expectable but now we have come to realize that every topic needs to be talked about and information distributed. Sure everybody doesn’t agree about all topics in life but at least we have the freedom to discuss all topics and share information. It’s really hard to think that not everybody has general information about basic life skills. Aren’t simple acts of hygiene just common sense? Don’t get me wrong there are plenty of people here that understand the basics of simple hygiene but it is when you get into the more “racier” topics that people really start to get nervous.