Malheureusement, Je n'ai pas de parapluie

I'm back to write another post and it's not raining outside, but if I sit here long enough, it probably will. And then the rain will come heavy, and then lighten, and I will have to make a decision on whether I should ride my bike home now as the rain is falling somewhat lightly before it potentially goes torrential again, getting a bit muddy in the process, or I could wait and see if it stops completely. This week I've been deciding wrong most of the time, but last week I was on cue. This week I've been deciding to go home when the rain lightens, and I get wet and muddy riding through puddles and torrents, and my bike chain gets all nasty. I'll arrive at home and the rain will stop completely; wrong decision. Last week I would do the same, but the long torrential downpours came. Yesterday I just said to hell with it and I just jumped on my bike in the middle of a downpour. It's a good feeling to just accept how muddy, wet, and cold you and your clothes are about to get and just run into the downpour every now and then. I've been keeping a plastic bag in my pocket ever since the rains started coming to protect anything that I don't want wet.

Summer classes started on August 1st and end tomorrow, and then we will have a week break and some teacher workshops. School will start again on August 10th. This past month I've been teaching or at least trying to teach my students MS Excel. I only have 2 more terms left to teach. This fall we'll focus on Excel, Powerpoint, and the Internet. I was horrified to find out none of the grade 12 students have ever researched or done a report on anything in their lives, so the 2nd and final term for my students will be focused on doing research and presenting a group report with Powerpoint to the grade 12 class. I'm hoping that it will become a yearly presentation; kind of a capstone computer project. The students won't have computer class during the 3rd term (a school year is 3 terms) because they will be focusing on their West African Exams.

Besides school, I've just been helping a couple internet cafés to get going, which is turning out to be more difficult than I imagined because the people running them have less experience on computers than some of my students. Believe it or not, a lot of things can go wrong with a small network of 5-10 second or third-hand computers. Also, we have internet at the school once again, so expect to see more frequent blog posts, and I'll be trying to get caught up on my e-mails.