More of February...

 This month we celebrated our good friend Hannah's birthday with scones and brownies that exploded while baking.

 We also started our weekend basketball games with the girls in our town. We have aspirations of making this a standing league and are looking for people in town who can help to organize games and keep people interested. We are currently looking for reversible jerseys that the girls can wear for games, so if you have any access to such things, please let me know.

 The town fair came to one of my other communities and just like the fair in the center of town, this one came with a live band and cross dressing dancers. This band had ladies in it who danced and sang and caused quite a scandal in town...I imagine.

 Here is one of many booths selling trinkets and candies.

 We also had our monthly photo shoot with the kids, this time they found our Halloween costumes.

 This last week we also had a 3 day HIV/AIDS workshop. We brought teachers and mentors from our communities to the workshop so that they could then work with us to replicate HIV/AIDS lessons in our towns and schools.

 Here is our neighbor Adela presenting one of the ways that HIV/AIDS cannot be transmitted...hugging.

 Here we are at the Peace Corps training center with Adela and Delia.

 Adela with her Diploma certifying her participation in the course.

 Delia with hers.

February Activities

 February was full of sports for Lizzy and myself. On this particular day I went with one of my schools to play against the elementary school teachers and some of the older students. My middle schoolers and I ended up tying in the final minutes 2-2 and then we went into penalty kicks. We barely squeaked by and it was the first time in 5 years that the Middle School defeated the Elementary School teachers. My boys were all very excited and immediately started talking about wanting to go and play against other schools.  Their field afforded excellent views of the area but became a dust bowl whenever there was wind, which was quite often.

 The elementary aged kids were and always are very curious of everything I do. The first few times I went to their school (they share the building with us, they go from 8-12:30, we go from 1-5) the kids just stared at me, completely dumbfounded. Some walked up and touched my hands, others rubbed my arms asking why I had weird dots on my arms and why I had so much arm hair. On this day they were enthralled in the stretches I was doing in preparation of our game. At first they just watched but as soon as I invited them to participate they jumped at the opportunity.

 This last photo is of my students at the middle school. The youngest students ended up beating the 5th and 6th graders and the older students and I beat the teachers team. It was a lot of fun.