My first day at work was good. I hardly slept that night so I was very tired. There is still tons to do before the students arrive on Thursday. My days will be extremely busy and therefore I will most likely post every other day or every two days.

We hired our house helper on Monday. This morning we pretty much asked for her to cook and clean for us twice a week, Monday and Wednesday. After a hard day at work my roommate and I get back to an apartment that is totally cleaned!! Our helper, Florence, cleaned the floors, washed the dishes, and cleaned the bathrooms. Florence also washed and folded my clothes. I believe she even washed the sheets on my bed. She’s super woman. Not only did she do that, but she also cooked for us. We had a lovely meal of sea bass with cream sauce, fresh green beans, salad, rice, and fruit salad for desert. It was absolutely amazing to come home to such a wonderful surprise. I think this will help us out a lot since we will put so much time into the school day. It was so nice to come home to a clean house and have a meal cooked for us.

Two of the new teacher’s and I have been running since we’ve been here. Yaounde is a city with many hills. We run on Mt. Febe. Monday and Tuesday we ran for 15minutes, but it was tough because half of that time we spent running up hill. I think we are going to try and train for a marathon. Our plan is to train and run one in March over spring break. But, we’ll see how that goes for us. It rained so hard today. I believe it is the beginning of the rainy season for this part of the country.

Today was another intense day. I needed to buy some plastic containers to place library books. The market, which has these items is called Rayco. Well, while driving there I accidentally take the wrong road, which means I wound up driving through the very crowded vegetable market. This place is totally filled with vegetables, people, and cars. It really doesn’t seem like a place for cars to pass through, but there I was driving through it along with the other cars. I found myself driving through massive amounts of people. It became overwhelming pretty quickly. The car was surrounded by people walking every direction, there were men trying to sell me live chickens, children hung on the sides of the car (even the rear spoiler), and cars coming the opposite way. It seemed as though I would hit someone or something. So, I tried sliding by a car that was coming my direction. Since my mind was trying to look out for 10,000 things I didn’t realize that I was too close to the truck to my left. I realized how close I was when my car scraped the side of the truck!! At this point, the children are still hanging on the car trying to get money from us. People who passed by told me to keep going because the truck hadn’t been ruined, only my car had been scraped on the side. This, like our weekend trip to the marche central made me extremely tense and nervous. I wish I would have taken a picture, it was such a crazy scene. I thought I would never get out of this market, but we finally did end up at Rayco where I did find the plastic tubs. At this point, I was still slightly shaken up by the drive through the market.

On a different note, my classroom looks absolutely amazing. The painters came in and painted the top portion of my classroom light blue. It totally brightens up the place. My class is still in a mess and I’m not sure how I will finish it by Thursday.

Well, I must go. I am extremely tired and will wake up early tomorrow morning to start fixing up the classroom.