Lest Gus think I’m being judgmental and mean, I wanted to write about a few things that didn’t suck.

First: my French class right now with Ryan, Peter, and G., the trainer. G. gives us some extremely awesome exercises. Today we had to use the future, so she had us write horoscopes. She also gave us this exercise, which is called "L’abri atomique". I think it is so awesome that I will reproduce it here.

La guerre détruit la civilisation. Dans un abri atomique, il y a des survivants (11) qui pourront continuer la race humaine. Ils ne pourront ressortir de l’abri que dans un mois, quand les décombres, radioactives seront á un niveau viable. Mais il n’y a de l’oxygène que pour 31 jours et seulement pour 6 personnes. Cinq d’entre elles devront donc se sacrifier pour permettre aux autres de reconstruire la civilisation.

Quelles sont celles des personnes suivantes que vous garderiez ou élimineriez ? Donnez les raisons de votre choix.

1. Un prêtre âgé de 45 ans.
2. Un médecin : 71 ans.
3. Une femme enceinte de 8 mois ; elle a le SIDA : 34 ans
4. Son mari, artiste, veut la suivre : 38 ans.
5. Un ancien policier, chassé de la police pour terrorisme : 29 ans.
6. Un charpentier, vendeur de drogue : 26 ans.
7. Une étudiante en biologie, anarchiste, était en prison pour terrorisme : 22 ans.
8. Un permier sourd-muet : 25 ans.
9. Un spécialiste d’énergie nucléaire (stérile) : 28 ans.
10. Un ingénieur homosexuel : 35 ans.
11. Une ancienne prostituée : 40 ans.

Second: after yesterday, I was super burned out and I went home and decided to study the passé simple, which is basically the most useless thing you can do and still feel productive. The "value" of the passé simple, according to my host family, is that it is used when you’re talking about something that has happened in the past that "doesn’t have an effect on the present". Of course, by definition, if you’re talking about it, it has an effect in the present. Confused? So am I. But at least I can conjugate the fuckers.

Third: yesterday I got frustrated during one of my classes and swore at them in English. At first I was a little worried, but now I’ve had time to reflect and I realize that it’s actually pretty funny. They had Space Pinball 3d open for the third time or something like that, and I said, "What are you fucking kids doing? Close that shit." It was a Francophone class, so in all likelihood they weren’t able to figure out what I meant exactly, but they understood "close". After that I emitted French that probably meant something like "If I find you with games again, I will teach the Discipline Master. This is not a card game. I am very angry."

Fourth: today I watched an English class. The English teachers are encouraged to talk only in English and only respond to English. I watched Rose and she was totally awesome. She caught a kid with headphones and sent him to the Discipline Master, and when the other kids laughed, she said "I don’t think it is funny. He will not be able to learn English. I think it is sad." One other time, she decided to move a student, and she said, "I think you should move up front. I think you will learn better in front."

Maybe these are things that don’t seem funny unless you’ve tried to teach a class. Me and Peter thought they were great.

Today I only had one class, which was a lab class, and I think it went pretty damned well. I actually got a couple of important points across:

• Try it and see what happens!
• You just read your notes aloud and the answer is in there! Listen to yourself!

Lastly: last night I had a dream that I put on a ton of weight all over. Kind of unnerving. Resolved to resume my exercises.

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Today was my first day of teaching. I had one hour of lecture and two hours of lab. I am exhausted.

I prepared fairly well I think; I was only a few minutes under on my lecture. But the students got a lot further in the lab than I expected. There were a few students who had weird situations — one somehow set her text color to white and couldn’t figure out why the text wasn’t coming. "Monsieur! Ça ne donne plus." (It isn’t giving any more.) [It's because the background is also white, and she couldn't see the results.]

Right now I’m utterly exhausted. Moi, je ne donne plus aussi.

And the worst part is that (like Jessica says) today was just the first day. We’re all like, "Yay, we did it!" but we have to do it over and over again for two more years.

I guess I should consider what I’m going to teach next time, based on lab sessions. Number one: Undo. It solves so many problems.

I only have one class tomorrow, but I have forgotten which.

The hard part is that the students will not get it but not really explain how they are not getting it.

I have been reading Round Two Cameroon, a volunteer who is finishing her term of duty. She was involved in a partnership with a charity called Books for Africa that ended up with a ton of books coming out here and being distributed to a bunch of different schools/libraries. I know a bunch of people stateside have been looking for a charity like this.

I’m looking through my lesson notes and there are a lot of things I didn’t realize. There’s just so much that needs to be explained here about how a computer and how software works. The curriculum covers stuff like "Inserting a graph" and "Printing" but really that’s just a cover for "How do we use mice" and "How do cursors work". Today a student asked me how to remove the cursor from her document — which is kind of a legitimate question, because it’s distracting if you’re trying to read.

There’s just a ton of basic groundwork stuff that we take for granted as computer users because we’ve been playing with the damned things for so long. It’s like trying to talk about rainbows with someone who wears sunglasses all the time — they’ll get it if you explain it enough, but they need you to explain everything. And critical thinking is really missing. I asked them how to guess whether I had gained or lost weight based on some random numbers I generated for my "weight" and they had no idea. Maybe I should have given them more time.

My first impression is that I suck at being a teacher. Maybe I do, maybe I don’t; I don’t feel like it’s "hard", just a huge pain in the ass. I don’t enjoy it, it’s not fun, I don’t have passion for it. Maybe it will be more fun as things go on, as I learn the class, as my students build in confidence and skill. But today is one of those days when I think about failing out.

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I have lessons tomorrow: two cinquieme classes (roughly 7th grade?) and one troisieme class (roughly 9th?). They number the grades in reverse here, so that "first grade" (première) is at the top. Well, in the Francophone system — the Anglophone system is the reverse, so Form I is the first class you take at a lycée (roughly junior high school + high school). Oh, and after Form V is "Lower Sixth" and after that is "Upper Sixth"; correspondingly, after "première" is "terminale". Having fun yet?

Here are the lessons I am planning on giving. The first one is a lab session, which should be pretty easy. I’m not going to translate these unless there’s a demand.

Cinquieme: Salle d’informatique.

Objectives: A l’aide d’un ordinateur en état de foncionnement, les élèves devront utiliser correctement au moins 10 touches du clavier; ouvrir Microsoft Word, saisir une phase au kilomètre et quitter Microsoft Word. [N.B. I have no idea what it means to "type a phase to a kilometer"; I'm going to fake it.]

Activities: Students will:

1. Démarrent leurs ordinateurs.
2. Ouvrent Microsoft Word.
3. Saisissent la phrase suivante: «J’étais à un cours de vacances pendant 2010.»
4. S’il y a les autres dans vos groupes, donnez le clavier à les autres, qui vont saisir: «Ça était très informatif!»
5. [S'il y a assez de temps:] Sauvegardent le document. Pour nom, choisissent le nom «pc_5e_3sem_NOM».
6. Changent de la couleur du texte. Sauvegardent encore une fois.
7. Quittent Microsoft Word. [Disez «non» quand il demande si vous voulez sauvegarder le document. S'il y a une autre question, disez aussi «non».]
8. Arrêtent l’ordinateur.

Cinquieme. 2. Les périphériques d’entrée.

Question. Comment est-ce qu’on contrôle une voiture? Comment est-ce que la voiture decide où elle va? (1 min.)

Question. Comment est-ce qu’on contrôle un ordinateur? (1 min.)

Ecrivez. Alors, ces périphériques sont les périphériques d’entrée.

Definition. Un périphérique d’entrée est un appareil ou un «organe» qui permet de rentrer des informations dans l’unité centrale. Quelquefois, les informations sont des instructions du utilisateur. (5 min.)

Exemples: le clavier et la souris sont périphériques d’entrée. (1 min.)

Question. Est-ce qu’un moniteur un périphérique d’entrée? Pourquoi? (1 min.) Et un appareil numerique? (1 min.)

Section: 2.1. Clavier.

Ecrivez. Il existe plusieurs types de claviers dont les plus connus sont: AZERTY (systéme francophone) et QWERTY (systéme anglophone). (1 min.)

Notre salle d’informatique a deux types du clavier AZERTY — alors, il faut être vigilant.

[Temps.] Ecrivez. Le clavier reçoit une pression qui est transmise à travers le microprocesser au systéme d’exploitation, sous forme d’un signal électrique. (3 min.)

Ecrivez. Compartiments. Les touches d’un clavier sont groupées en compartiments. (1 min.)

Quelquefois il y aura les compartiments absent, par exemple parce que il n’y a pas assez d’espace. Ça n’est pas grave.

Questions? (15 minutes in.)

Section: 2.1.1. Le pavé alphanumerique.

Ecrivez: La touche «tab» ou «tabulateur» ou «tabulation» est utilisée pour mettre l’espace et aussi pour bouger le curseur dans un formulaire. (2 min.)

Ecrivez: La touche «Caps lock» ou «Verr maj» permet de bloquer la majuscule. Si on appuye cette touche, la désactive en appuyant une deuxième fois. (2 min.)

Ecrivez: La touche «Shift» ou «Maj» permet d’ecrire des lettres en majuscule ou tout un caractere au-dessus d’une touche. (2 min.)

On peut ecrire les lettres en majuscule ou les caracteres au-dessus jusqu’a on desserre la touche «Shift».

Ecrivez: La touche «Contrôle» est utilisée pour effectuer des commandes en raccourci. Elle permet aussi d’exécuter quelques fonctions alternatives. (2 min.)

Ecrivez: La touche «Alt Gr» permet d’écrire les troisièmes caractères lorsqu’ils existent. (2 min.)

Question. Comment introduit-on le nombre «8»? (5 min.) Le trait «_» (ou «souligner»)? Le trait «» (ou anti-slash)?

Ecrivez: La «barre d’espacement» permet d’introduire un espace entre les mots. (1 min.)

Ecrivez: La touche «Entrée» ou «Enter» ou «OK» permet au moins de trois choses: – de mettre fin à un ligne lors de la saisie; – d’accepter un choix; – d’exécuter des fonctions dans certains logiciels. (5 min.)

Ecrivez: La touche «Backspace» ou «Retour arrière> permet de déplacer le curseur en effaçant la lettre qui se trouve à sa derrière. (2 min.)

Questions? (34 minutes in.)

Section: 2.1.2. Le pavé de fonctions.

Ecrivez: Les touches de fonctions permet d’envoyer les commandes en raccourci. Le rôle de chaque fonction dépend des différents logiciels utilisés. (3 min.)

Section: 2.1.3. Le pavé numerique.

Ecrivez: Ces touches permettent d’entrer rapidement les nombres lorsque la touche «Num Lock» ou «Verr Num» est activée. (2 min.)

Section: 2.1.4. Le pavé de défilement du curseur.

Ecrivez: Ces touches permettent le déplacement du curseur. (1 min.)

Question: Quand «Verr Num» n’est pas activée, que font les touches du pavé numerique? (1 min.)

Ecrivez: Les touches du pavé numerique ont les fonctions similaires que ceux du pavé de défilement du curseur quand «Num Lock»/«Verr Num» n’est pas activée. (3 min.)

Les touches qui suivent ont des fonctions différentes qui dépend du logiciel. Nous parlons de ceux qui est utilisée en traitement du texte.

Ecrivez: La touche «Delete» ou «Del» ou «Suppr» permet d’effacer les caractères qui se trouvent après le curseur. (2 min.)

Ecrivez: La touche «Inser» permet d’écrire une lettre en écrasant l’autre quand elle est activée. (2 min.)

Ecrivez: La touche «Fin» ou «End» permet d’aller à la fin d’une ligne. (1 min.)

Ecrivez: La touche «Debut» ou «Home» permet d’aller au début d’une ligne. (1 min.)

Ecrivez: La touche «Page up» permet de dérouler l’écran vers le haut rapidement. (1 min.)

Ecrivez: La touche «Page down» permet de dérouler l’écran vers le bas rapidement. (1 min.)

Questions? (52 minutes in.)

Rest of time: chalkboard practice. Pick a volunteer to be the user. Edit some words.

Troisième. 1 suite. (Introduction au tableur Excel.)

Exercises à corriger?

Advice on how to operate a computer.

1. On peux soulever le souris si on n’a pas assez d’espace pour bouger le pointeur où on veut.

   Paper practice. (5 min.)

2. Quand on saisit quelquechose, où parait le texte?

   Pour saisit un calcul, il faut bouger le curseur avant de commencer.

   Paper practice. (5 min.)

Board: Nombres.

Jour.	Mon poids (kilos).
1/7	77.0
2/7	77.4
3/7	79.8
4/7	77.3
5/7	75.4
6/7	79.6
7/7	75.7
8/7	78.4
9/7	75.6
10/7	78.0

Question: Est-ce que j’ai perdu du poids, ou non? (6 min.)

Section: 1.9. Les fonctions graphiques.

Ecrivez: Excel a un grapheur intégré qui représente des données introduites dans une feuille de calcul sous la forme de graphes. (2 min.)

Section: 1.9.1. Créer un graphe.

Ecrivez: Pour créer un graphe, on marque d’abord les données à representer avec les noms des champs. On clique ensuite sur le bouton «Graphique» de la barre d’outils ou on exécute les commandes «Insertion/Graphique», puis on clique sur «Suivant» et enfin sur «Terminer». (5 min.)

DO: Look around the room. Are people putting guillemets correctly?

Questions? Tout le monde a compris? (25 minutes in.)

Paper practice. Comment est-ce que je peux créer un graphe ici? (10 minutes.)

Section: 1.9.2. Types de graphes.

Par défaut, Excel crée une représentation graphique sous forme d’histogramme.

Ecrivez: Excel peut créer les graphes histogramme, barres, courbes, secteur, et nuage des points. On peut choisir le type du graphe après on a choisi «Insertion/Graphique», avant de cliquer «Suivant». (5 min.)

Je ne suis pas sur de cela, en fait, mais il y a un fonction pour changer le type d’un graphe.

Section: 1.10. La mise en page.

Question. Qu’est-ce que cela veut dire, «mise en page»?

Ecrivez: La mise en page consiste à choisir les marges, le type, et l’orientation du papier. Pour faire la mise en page, il suffit de cliquer sur le menu «Fichier», puis choisir l’option «Mise en page» et de répondre aux questions. (5 min.)

Board: Draw an example format-page window.

• Format [A4, etc.]
• Largeur []
• Hauteur []
• Orientation
  • [] portrait ????? [portrait]
  • [] landscape ????? [paysage]
• Marges
  • A gauche: [2] cm
  • A droite: [2] cm
  • Au dessus: [2] cm
  • Au dessous: [2] cm

(5 min.)

Questions? (50 minutes in.)

Section: 1.11. L’impression.

Ecrivez: En cliquant sur le menu «Fichier» et sur l’option «Imprimer», on peut imprimer la page sélectionnaire (où se trouve le curseur) ou toute la feuille de calcul. (3 min.)

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Someone organized for tonight a "Pirate Party" which included everyone bringing their external hard drives and swapping stuff. Naturally it turns out that my Western Digital Passport broke sometime between leaving New York and now. Naturally I disassembled it with some force, and was left with a problem and some pieces. The problem is that the USB connector for the SATA drive broke off somehow. You suck, Western Digital. But now I have a SATA drive which should work fine, only I don’t really have a way to plug it into anything, since all I have are laptops. So, if someone wants to send me a SATA to USB connector, or a cute SATA/USB enclosure, that would be nice. Alternately, I may be able to swap in the SATA drive for the hard drive of one of my laptops, and do Computer Science to get contents onto the other one.. but that’s not really a convenient storage mechanism, and that’s what I’m looking for right now.

Realized also that there’s a bunch of stuff I wanted to copy over onto this machine that never made it over, no idea why.

During the course of the party, I blew away a bunch of files from my old job. It’s only July, and the project was supposed to end in August? But I still wonder how it’s going. (Prediction: shittily.) I would have liked, ideally, to archive some part of these files, but realistically I’m never gonna look at them again. Souvenirs: we had a shitty SVN server, when what we needed was a good Git server. svnsync was useless. We had gigabytes of VD files in a Dropbox account, when what we needed was a solid generic technical/visual design. We had PHP, which can basically ruin any project.

Placed a letter in the envelope marked "Mails with Cameroonian Stamps" at the party, only three days after writing it. Going to check to see how many days it takes before that envelope gets emptied. It may get a free ride to Yaounde before actually having to deal with the post system. Hopefully it will get to Gus before the end of August, when she moves out of her current place.

During the party, knocked over and broke a mostly empty bottle of Whiskey Black which I had been drinking. Deeply upsetting. Maybe I ought to stick to Fanta from now on.

After the party, walked Rose and Jeneca back to their houses with Timothy and (wisely chosen by Timothy) Timothy’s host brother. No incidence of anything resembling trouble, but still glad to have had the backup just in case. Timothy and his brother walked me back afterwards.

Now I’m trying to move some fairly large files that I acquired tonight over to my personal media player without much luck. I’m about to call it a night and just move it to a USB key or an SD card. Still haven’t started my lesson plans for Monday. Wish you were here.

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Finally, Camtel came through. All right.

Here’s another couple pictures.

Jared and Jenny with the Organization director for Cameroon. My booboo looks much like Jared’s.

Me trying to help cook. My host family thought this was noteworthy enough to borrow my camera to take a picture with.

Me and Claude. My new Africtures (long-sleeved model).

My family "keeps" chickens, although I haven’t seen them actually be useful yet. Some of them roost inside the house; others go behind the house and roost in a tree. The first time I saw that, I thought it was the funniest fucking thing I had ever seen, and spent about half an hour trying to get a good picture of chickens in trees in the dusk. Not easy.

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Today we received our bicycles and that means class got out "earlier". My host family said something about going to a funeral, which could be interesting but would interfere with other social activities that are happening today, so I’m hanging out here where there is reasonable Internet and thought I’d upload some photos.

Figure 1 shows me, Jenny, and my host brother Claude at some monuments in the city center. Jenny is mimicking the pose of the statue; the shirt I am wearing was of the two "Africtures" I got.

Figure 2 shows my "community host"’s house at my post. It is in a place that has been dug out of a hill; the picture was taken from the top of the path that leads down to the house. You can see: his mother, his son, his wife, his daughter (note that children may not be related directly by blood) and in the background, in front of the shack, is his actual daughter that is studying pharmacology somewhere.

Figure 3 is a picture of the path that I was on when I took the picture shown in figure 2.

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Observation continues. I don’t know why, but it’s the most exhausting part of training so far. Perhaps that is why each day I want to go to the bar and drink. Then again, maybe it is merely my latent alcoholism coming to the fore. Yesterday I watched the above-named lesson ("Chapter 1 continued").

I have two lessons I actually have to give on Monday, about which I am both excited and terrified, naturally. The first one is a lab period, so that’s OK, but the other one is going to be an actual lecture of about an hour. I think my plan is to produce two lessons of about an hour each, or maybe four or five of about a half-hour each, so that I have a buffer in case I run out of material. But whereas last time I told myself to speak slowly, this time I think I need to speak quickly; that’s what the most engaging teachers I have seen have done.

The USB key still doesn’t work, but I received a call from Camtel today that said that they actually got around to telling HQ that a USB key was purchased, and that it should start working "this evening", which was later revised to "dix-sept heures" (5 PM imperial time). Andrew, who has done this training before and is thus bored completely out of his mind, watched me try it during class and ad-libbed an Internet-based Lord’s Prayer. Yeah, it’s been done before, but it was still fairly good. Naturally the key still doesn’t work. If in fact they successfully activated the right USB key, it may start working as soon as tomorrow; but when you consider that this is a giant telecom, and a Third World telecom at that, you’ll understand why I’m doubtful.

Hey, by the way, does anyone know the origin of the term "third world"? I’ll have to look it up when I get some Internet. Anyhow, I’ve seen a few people wearing pagne ("PAN-yeuh", the name of a type of fabric here, which is made of cotton somewhere in Africa and usually printed fairly outlandishly; it’s what you make Africtures out of) with the Camtel logo on it, including one that was an entire suit jacket, and I think I would totally rock that if I got the chance.

Yesterday we went to Lotus Bleu, and Jenny had said she wanted to play Pandemic but instead we ended up gossiping about the other trainees, particularly who is likely to pair up, and assigning each a probability for whether they will hook up with a local. Some, like the one who said my host brother Claude was cute, are easy pickings. Others are harder to say. Perhaps after a few months, people will have lowered their standards for cleanliness enough, but right now there are quite a few who I just can’t picture touching other human beings. (I’m in that group.)

Tonight I ended up at the other bar (among other highlights: Jacqueline making a fairly involved joke about our bike training tomorrow, particularly how it is going to follow the methodologies we have been taught, and how it is going to have a complicated and meaningless "theory" section about the numbers of teeth on each gear before we actually ride any bikes) and discovered that at some point a committee of Jared (who has all the tattoos) and Andrew (I think the other one — the one who smokes) have voted me and Ben "most likely to masturbate". For the record, let me just state that the logistics of an act like that here are very complicated. (Too much information?) We also noticed that one of the other ICT volunteers who is here to help train us in model school has, completely by accident, had a dress made out of the "official" nerd gear for our stage. Naturally this is great because it validates our choice of fabric; even other nerds gravitate to it (and no one else).

I got another letter from Gus. I have already written my reply to the first one, but it’s been a couple days and I haven’t sent it because I haven’t been able to get her summer address from the Internet (because: negligible Internet). Working on it. Sorry sweetie.

Tomorrow I get to do laundry, about which I’m fairly excited, including washing my towel, which has acquired all manner of fascinating smells, and all the clothes I was wearing when I was sick.

Lastly, I’d like to mention that I have written the word "stagier" ("stagiere" and "stagiers") in some blog posts. Turns out that I had the spelling wrong; it’s "stagiaire" (both masc. and fem., I think). Sorry for the inconvenience.

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First off, happy birthday to Chiz (whose birthday it was yesterday). Also, happy birthday to Esther, whose birthday it is today. Sorry I forgot to say something.

Secondly, the model school started today. Actually started, although opening ceremonies were yesterday, because today I observed my first classes. Thoughts:

1. J-P, who is the trainer for ICT stuff, is actually a pretty engaging teacher in French, and the volunteer (AD) who is a teacher for ICT is actually pretty dull in French. The situations are naturally completely opposite in English. I guess this means I really need to get my French in order, and really pay attention to my persona in the classroom.
2. I wore my first booboo today. It’s the same material that Jenny and Jared got at first, but there wasn’t enough for it to be our "official" ICT nerd-gear. The booboo, which is apparently a traditional Cameroonian garment, has been nicknamed "the Jared" because he was the first one to get something made. In fact, in our assessments today, I got something that says "Should try wearing more local fabrics", which is utterly ridiculous on so many levels, but there you are. I also commissioned my second booboo, this one in the "ICT fabric". Pictures will be forthcoming.
3. I talked to the director of education yesterday. He sounded like he was of the opinion that I might have a different post soon, about which I have conflicted feelings. I liked Batié, but I did not like that I didn’t really see a need for me.
4. New French classes; I’m with Ryan and Peter. Ryan is about as good as I am, maybe a little better, but Peter glazes over after the first hour or so. I got a few minutes alone with my trainer and I mentioned to her that there hadn’t been a great need for me, and she repeated more-or-less the thing that Nadege had said about how sometimes the PTA hires teachers if there aren’t any available, but my feeling is that if someone is going to get a free teacher, it doesn’t need to be the people in the West who can afford to hire someone else.
5. USB key still doesn’t work. Will try harassing Camtel tomorrow.
6. Got mail from Gus today! Also a letter from Aunt Jeanie. The US postmarks say: 5 Jun and 11 Jun respectively. The Cameroonian postmarks say 20 Jun. How long has the Organization therefore been holding them? You do the math. Neither has been "clipped" to see if there are delicious candy inside.

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This is the report I’m going to send to the director of the education program.

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So, although I bought a USB key from Camtel, I am not having any luck getting it to work. Sigh.

This morning started off OK. Highlights: the most delicious pineapple (anana) I have ever had, with hints of vanilla, orange, and coffee. Also, as we left, J-C broke out into "Hello Goodbye" [is that the name? I can't check right now] by the Beatles. He didn’t have all the words right, but the essence is pretty unchangable: "You say goodbye, I say hello."

We went to the Lycee and hung around for a while. This is where things get a little bizarre. First: they have at least one, possibly two, computer science teachers already (I’m going to use the term "informatics", because that’s what they’re called in French). Second: they also have a computer lab with 11 computers, the majority of which seemed to work OK. Thirdly: when I proposed setting up an Internet connection for ‘em, they said that they’d have to check with their "consultant", who is their go-to dude for matters ordinateur. So, basically, what the hell am I needed there for? Hard to say. I tried to ask J-C on the way out of town and he said something like "What are you talking about? It’s better to have someone who’s trained in this instead of other people." I guess he could mean, trained in teaching informatics — but I’m not, really.

I talked a little bit to Nadege when I got back and she said that it’s pretty common, because there’s a dearth of teachers, for schools to hire arbitrary people to teach courses in stuff like informatics, and it may be that it’s much cheaper for the school to have a "real teacher", especially a volunteer, instead of those "vacatiers" (substitutes/temps). But it doesn’t make me feel like an especially productive development worker.

I’ll talk to Gaby tomorrow — I also have to write up a report about the housing situation — but I have seen that in general, everything the Organization does has at least two reasons, possibly three, so I’ll take it on faith that there really is some kind of need there for me. But so far it’s looking like I’m scoring pretty low on the Organization Suffering Sweepstakes. I’m a little bummed because my priority has always been where I am needed most, and I feel like this is probably not it. But who can say.

Gonna try to reboot into Windows to get the USB key working.

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