The rains have come, sporadically

The weather is a bit cooler now that the rains have come, sporadically. There were even a couple of days at the beginning of last week where I didn’t need the air conditioner and hardly used the fan. Amazing! I’m now back on line but with Orange, the other provider. All is going well but the speed seems to be a real problem. It looks as though I’m still at 54 Mbits/sec. when I was promised 128! Well, the technician says he’s coming to check it out. But there have been many times that the connection cuts out because with the rain storms, the electricity invariably cuts out too and all you can do is wait until everything reconnects.

A colleague, a young American Fulbright research scholar leaves today, travelling south for a couple of weeks and then off to Mali to work with an NGO there. She left me a few bits and pieces, dustpan and brush, pegs, bucket, and a few other things. All very useful including a Nobel prize winner author read. That’s what happens here. “Foreigners” come and go. On the floor of the apartment building where I live, newly arrived Chinese teachers have moved in. Unfortunately, I don’t think this coming and going makes for a very positive impression with the locals. They become resigned to it but it doesn’t fit with the culture here. To be accepted which means forming relationships, you have to show that you can fit in from the inside and this takes time.

It’s now exam time for the students before the summer break. It’s a good time because I can get some reading done before the new semester in September. I’m working in both French and English and I really like that. I’m now also writing in French which means I’m really settling into the language. Good language exposure on TV really helps as it puts the language into a broad daily context and reading contextualizes in a more specific way. So, somehow it comes together and I’m most appreciative of all that makes this possible.