Making Friends
It was just last week that I begun teaching class. After three treacherous days of nothing going wrong and waking up at my normal time, national holiday began. Since I teach all freshman, I didn’t teach any classes the first four weeks at site. Instead, all my students were busy practicing goose stepping, military chants, and doing countless pushups as part of their freshman military training. This is all part of a regiment of social cohesion exercises that begins in middle school. The first chunk of time at the start of your first year in middle school, high school, and college is devoted to these military drills. They range in length from one week to five weeks, getting longer as you get older (though the exact durations vary between schools and provinces). So the first four weeks I spent “integrating” into the community per Peace Corps goals. It was my conscious mindset and I made new friends. Kinda. The first new friend I made is also a teacher on campus. She also fre