My blog title gives the false illusion that I am riding my bicycle here, there, and everywhere. The truth is I am protesting. It's hot season right now and during the day from the hours of 10 am - 4 pm if there's no breeze that day all you can do is find a nice place to lie. I have not ridden my bicycle in the last two weeks or so; which I'm lucky for the fact that I live near a mine because there's plenty of transport that I can flag down instead of sweating up the hills, the joys of living by a river, it truly is uphill both ways... and I'm not talking small hills. Anyways, this doesn't mean that I don't do any work during the days. Actually most days I'm at the school until around noon and other days I try to continue doing work by laying in my hammock reading education materials/lesson planning/etc..
     I feel like every time I make a blog entry I comment on how I've been MIA on the blog front.. but this I think is the longest I've gone without updating you all. Sorry, and at this point many of you may have lost interest after my lack of updating. I know I would get frustrated when my sister was abroad and I'd visit her page multiple times only to find out that she had not graced us with her presence. There's a multitude of excuses: things have been busy, don't have electricity/my computer at my hut so I do have to wait until I get into town, but even so the main reason is I do not have a clue where to start. So much has occurred and I already found it difficult enough to try to describe my experience now I find it next to impossible. But have to start somewhere so here are some life updates.

* Zambia has a new president! President Sata was inaugurated into office on Friday. All of last week we were on standfast in our villages (standfast=you must stay in your villages and not come to your provincial town where the PC house is or travel anywhere else). The elections were held at the school on Tuesday and then the results were announced shortly after midnight, early Friday morning. The previous party had been in power for 20 years so many Zambians wanted a change in office but feared the the elections would be rigged.  There were isolated incidents of violence/car burnings in the waiting period before the results were announced because of the fear of an unfair election. From the media that I have heard or seen since the announcement of Zambia's new president they are holding Zambia as an example not only of how fair elections can occur but also how the ruling power can peacefully step down from office. I am glad that we had a fair and relatively peaceful election.

* I built an outdoor oven/grill. With all the hype and excitement around the election school did not occur at all this week so on election day Audra and I finally built an oven at my hut! Two of our Zambian friends also helped us a fair bit.. meaning we probably would have been lost without them. So now we have a fully functioning oven with a top that can be used as a grill. We broke it in on Friday night grilling black bean burgers and baking brownies. Think I'm going to like the ease of baking with an oven instead of having to use the double boiler system on the brazier to bake bread. There are plans to bake pumpkin bread (thanks mom and dad for the fall celebration birthday package :) and for our Christmas celebrations to bake cookies. There seem to be endless possibilities but this also means I need to find a charcoal supplier. I'm always running low and then out before I can locate someone that has charcoal within carrying distance.

* I have a newly thatched roof!! I had some great skylights there for a couple of weeks :) The star gazing was great, the bat squeaks interesting, but the impending rains made it a little nerve wrecking in addition to having to live my life out of containers because everything within the hut would be covered in grass and dirt. The roof looks great. So the story for why I needed a new roof; basically the wrong type of grass was used, the kind of grass that bugs love, so wood weevils ate my beams and so they had to be replaced as well. Now all that's left is to put up some black plastic on the inside against the thatch to cut down on dust/allergies and also to make up for a couple of areas where the sunlight sneaks through.. meaning rain will have a hay day raining within my hut.

* School life: I walk to Lumwana East Basic School almost everyday. I am co-teaching grade 8 geography with Mr. Yambama the science and geography teacher for grade 8 and 9. We just wrapped up teaching about weather and now are moving into teaching about Zambia. We co-teach instead of teach alone following the rationale that it's more sustainable to work with a counterpart and then the teacher you work with practices using student centered learner methods in the classroom while you teach together and then carries on teaching with a variety of methods instead of the standard write the notes on the board and lecture mode. It's been going well when school happens but I find my largest frustration to be the fact that there are so many things that stop school from occurring or from pupils teaching. But that's a separate vent session. Last week we taught about wind speed and direction. They needed to learn about a wind anemometer that measures wind speed but all we had was a black and white picture in the one book my teacher has to teach geography from, so we got creative and made pinwheels to demonstrate how the anemometer works. The following day I made I demonstration model wind vane to demonstrate how you can find out the direction of the wind from an instrument none of them have ever seen. The weather instruments are only found at the weather stations in Zambia and there is definitely not one located near our village. I was proud to see my co-teacher and I already using hands-on methods in the classroom, he made a flipchart diagram of other information for both lessons. He seems to be excited about bringing new ideas into the classroom which is refreshing especially after spending an entire term observing things at the school, getting to know everyone, and figuring out what the community needs help with the most. It's really good to finally be doing something. Integrating into the community was and is essential but refraining from teaching was slowly driving me crazy.
     So you might be wondering... what else are you up to besides teaching grade 8 geography. Well, let me tell you about the other projects I have planned for this term. I am starting a literacy club where we do a read-aloud, the children will have access to the 40-ish books we have in the storage room, we'll do a follow up activity from the book, and then they can visit the station of their choice. The main goal is to promote the joy of reading and also improve the English literacy skills of pupils. We're starting the club the first week of October, reading "The Giving Tree" by Shel Silverstein. It's a bit of a challenge to find quality children's literature over here...
     I'm also working on the World Map Project. I'm making a map of the world on the side of the school that faces the road. It's a source of community pride if you have a nice map on the side of your school so it's best to have it visible from the road. I scrubbed the wall clean and then painted it white (half of it was blue). When I get back to site it'll all be painted blue and then my artistic skills will be put to the test. It's based off of a grid system so supposedly you don't need to be artistically inclined. Don't get me wrong I love arts and crafts time but never been particularly talented on the sketching or drawing realm, so we'll see. It'll be great to have the world map there though because of the lack of text books at the school their world knowledge especially geography of where different countries are is a bit lacking through no fault of their own.
     The grade 7's and grade 9's have their national exams this term. Grade 7 and 9 are the only grades given national exams and they must pass their exam in order to continue their education. There are a group of motivated pupils that get together and study off of the previous exams. Audra and I have started to do exam review/study session help where we work together through the difficult problems or questions. It is a bit tricky because the tests don't always test what is being taught in the schools. Also they focus on very detailed specific questions such as asking in detail the function and how it works of a froth flotation instrument that uses chemicals and air pressure to separate pieces of copper from other materials. Good information to know if you're going into mining and perhaps to learn at the secondary school or even university level but I am failing to understand why a rural grade 9 pupil needs to know these details when they will likely never encounter such a machine and have never learned about it in class. I completed the grade 9 geography exams paper one and paper two and found myself struggling with the obscure questions as well as vague maps that you are supposed to identify information from. The pupils have the struggle of being educated in rural third world conditions but also of being tested on irrelevant and trickily worded exams. So we're making the best of what the situation because I can make a difference in teaching the children in my school zones but I will not be able to affect the national policy or write new exams for them. An additional struggle exists in the fact that each grade and subject has a specific national syllabus that states all information that should be taught. Which is really great! But the Education Office does not have copies of the upper grade subjects and so teacher do not have access to that information and therefore struggle with what is important to teach and what needs to be focused on.
     I also started a PenPal program in our school with the grade 7 pupils. Unfortunately it seems my classrooms letters have been lost in the mail as I mailed them the end of July and they have yet to arrive in Michigan for Mr. Babich's Grade 5 students to read and reply to.. which is just disappointing. The pupils worked really hard on their letters, writing a first draft and then revising, even drawing pictures. But coming to realize you simple must roll with it so will get in contact Mr. Babich and see if his pupils can write us introduction letters...
     Another point of focus is teaching at TGMs (Teacher Group Meetings). We have them 'every week' which breaks down to about 7 or 8 times a term, which is a lot better than most schools who do not meet at all or once a term. I am teaching on 5 different topics at Lumwana East Basic, started with Student Centered Learning and will cover other things like making education relevant to the child, literacy help, classroom management, and the list goes on. There are 5 government schools in my zone and I plan to visit each school and teach at least one TGM for their teachers. I have already visited the schools to introduce myself and ask the teachers what topics they would like me to present on.

* Another main project is planning Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World). They held the first girls camp for Northwest Province last April and we are holding the second camp in December to accommodate schedules better. Which means the timeline is short and there are many things to do in the meantime. Which is actually why I'm at the house. We worked on some GLOW points today and tomorrow I'm headed down to Lusaka for a two day Training of Trainers where myself, two other PCVs and the Zambian Facilitators who are helping at the camp all come together and we get everything squared away for the sessions we're holding at the camp. The main focus of the camp is girl empowerment and education. Each volunteer involved will bring two girls and a Zambian woman teacher to attend the camp; upon returning they start a Girls Club with the help of the PCV.

There are many other life updates but I have grown tired of typing so I'm going to take a break, post this and add another update soon! Hope life is grand stateside and everyone is enjoying a bit of fall for me :)