Starting out

Post by Lara

Hello all, and welcome to our blog!  It's funny how nervous I am to begin this, especially when I have become so blog-obsessed in recent years.  Being on the writing end feels like a lot more responsibility.

Kevin and I are scheduled to leave for Philadelphia on June 5, 2012.  From Philly we board a bus to New York, then a plane to Brussels, then another plane to Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone.  Right now our thoughts are focused on what to pack and how to fit it all into a 50-lb-or-less suitcase each.  [Note: we're allowed two 50-lb suitcases each, but who wants to carry 100 lbs of luggage all over the place? Not us.]  At the same time, we're winding down our life in Ohio and working on deciding what all we want to come back to in 2 years and what we can depart with now. This will be interesting.

We don't yet know where our site will be and what the details will be (electricity? market nearby or a 20-mile bike ride away? cell phone reception?), but we do know that we are both going to be teaching secondary math. Secondary, of course, is a loose term in Sierra Leone. I'm told this could range from integers and fractions up to algebra (and maybe some fun things like trigonometry? That could be wishful thinking on my part...)  We also know that we will be learning probably a minimum of 2 languages, one of which will be Krio.  Krio is a fascinating language and the one that the vast majority of Sierra Leoneans speak.  If anyone is interested in a Krio lesson, check out this video.  Apparently proverbs are very important to the Krio language, so many language lessons are taught through popular proverbs.  The neat thing about this method of teaching a language is that I think it offers some insight into the culture of its speakers. When one knows which proverbs apply in different scenarios and how to use them in context, one has a unique window into the most important cultural concepts of the people and, I hope, can better understand them. How about a Krio proverb to drive home that point?  This is from the Krio proverbs list on Sierra-Leone.org:  "When you go to a country where the people dance on one foot, you should dance on one foot as well. If you dance on two feet, they'll cut one of them from under you."

That will be it for post #1.  Looks like we're officially bloggers now!