One thing's for sure we're all gonna be a lot thinner

Seen some odd things the other day. There was this cow and it had some of its internal organs hanging out of her vagina. It was so disgusting... so Forrest and I were straying at her trying to figure out what is was then its baby came over to drink some milk. And the mother cow, with her insides all on the outside, urinates all over the baby cows face. So just when you think this cow cant become more disgusting, she does something like that and totally redeems herself.

I was correcting papers yesterday and students are such cheaters. It is sad that they can make it through the school system without learning and cheating so much. But some of papers are pretty funny. Lucky Dube, a South African reggae star, is very popular here. He is a hero and idol for many of the students. And I asked my students to write a paragraph about their idol or hero. Well one student writes the opening paragraph on first website that shows up on a Lucky Dube google search. Other students have the same paragraphs even though I had two test with different questions. One student made an honest mistake, well she might of cheated also but that is not the point. She wrote, “I quickly fucked myself to bed”. She meant to say tucked of course but that was really funny. Seriously though grading these tests were really disappointing. It took me over a week to finish grading all of them and several students actually earned a score of zero. So I needed up giving everyone at least 5 points. But the classes average grades were about 45%. They didn't study is one reason, I asked harder questions than they have probably seen in English, and I didn't let them cheat.

It is stupid hot and humid tonight. The bugs are really bad too. So I am hiding in my bed under my net. Sweating and typing up a blog entry.

If anyone has any ideas for teaching basic critical thinking skills let me know. People here have a lot of trouble with problem solving and critical thinking. So I want to try and work that into my classes. So if you know any activities that are short and easy send them my way.

Ashley,

Thanks for the email. Portuguese is still a struggle and I have been busy with school and not studying much. I got the Little Prince in Portuguese so I want to start reading that more. I think it should help my Portuguese a lot.

Jodi,

It gets really boring out here on the weekends, weekdays too. I have been sleeping a lot and feel like I am wasting my time. Im trying to workout more because I am out of running shape. I played basketball the other night and that was really fun. I want to start doing that more. Then I can practice my Portuguese more too.

O and we can travel outside the provibce now and I want to go get a guitar soon. I have not been playing music much. I played the drum a lot the last couple days. But not the ukulele. Last Sunday I played on my computer most of the day. It was painfully slow and a waste of most of the day. But I had my mind set on downloading some Dirty Heads. I finally succeeded after 7 or 8 hours. But we had my computer charging two phones and kindle, connected to the internet, downloading a CD, and playing on facebook. All at our house with not energy or lights at that. So in the dark playing on Facebook for my Sunday night. It was kind of nice playing online. We might be getting power soon. I don’t even really want it. Then just other things to distract me from school and Portuguese. But having some light will be really nice. I want to get a desk to study on at home too.

Ok I think this is about it. I just moved my bamboo style mat outside it is a lot nicer but the bugs are driving me crazy now. These are the tough decisions we have to make out here in Mabalane! Peace, love, and do good things

Jimmy