Socks, Scripts, and YouTube Clips (Sat 6/20)

I woke up myself today without the help of Paul and felt a lot better today! I no longer have a runny nose, but still a little bit of a cough. I drudged myself to Paul’s room where the kettle finally reappeared! I prepared myself water, organized my room, took a bucket bath, got ready and went to the office around 9:45am. I thought I would be the last one showing up so late but I turned out to be the first! There was no reason to start working until someone showed up so I played on my phone until Eli came in. Unfortunately, he was feeling worse again and told me that he threw up once more last night. I hope and pray that his health gets better as he’s been feeling unwell for quite some time now! 

It was time to get to work now which meant that I would finally work on making a video guide for Kolibri. I’ve been putting this off for almost two weeks now as it’s not the easiest to make a video guide that’s good (lots of planning). I put together a brief set of things I wanted to cover in my video before it was tea time. Eli and I ate hard boiled eggs and mandazi as usual, but this time we had salt! The past couple of tea times there’s either no salt or we get an entire heaping tablespoon of it for a single egg. It always feels horrible to waste so much salt so I was glad to see that there was a makeshift salt shaker for us to use (a repurposed toothpick container). I was hungry this morning and had two portions of breakfast (2 mandazi and one egg per portion). Of course Eli had to call me out and joked that I was getting so “tubby” from eating so much!

When we came back to the office, Miraclin arrived right after us! She obviously just missed tea time with us so she left to go eat. With only two of us in the office and nothing better to do, it was time to work on the dreaded video. There was an open and quiet room for me to use so I set out to record my first video, and to be honest, it turned out horribly. I stumbled over my words, couldn’t figure out simple explanations of things, and overall made a product I was not proud of. In my ignorance and feeling excited to be a YouTuber for once, there were a lot of things that I didn’t prepare for beforehand that I thought I didn’t need. 

I was trying to demonstrate how to use the Kolibri Studio website and everything it had to offer. A script sounded unnecessary to do such a simple task, but after this first attempt I think it’s very much necessary. To learn from my mistake I immediately wrote down everything I needed to do to make it better and downloaded a couple different computer programs to make recording and editing easier. I hope that over the next few days I’m able to give it another go!

Partially defeated, I left the room to see that Henry had showed up just in time to start reviewing Math Club documents. We reviewed a ton of materials until it was time for lunch. We had rice, beans, and cabbage that was very filling and enjoyable. Even Embe was served with the meal which always puts a smile on my face. Lunch time ended quickly (there’s not an allotted time for lunch, but we figure it’s best if we get back to work sooner than later), and got back to reviewing. 

Miraclin, Henry, and I did the bulk of the work while Eli would pop in here and there to give some sort of criticism and proceed to not help fix the error he saw. Not being that much help, Eli left to go do his laundry. In the middle of reviewing a wave of exhaustion fell over me so I took a quick power nap to rejuvenate my reviewing abilities. Adding in diagrams, rewording paragraphs, and generally making the documents look nicer is satisfying work when everything is said in done. At one point I calculated how many more documents we needed to review for just Form 1 and we “only” have 84 more left to go… There are still 5 forms after.

Eventually it was time for me to do my laundry as Saturday is what I’ve decided to be my laundry day at around 5:00pm. In my opinion it’s the perfect time to wash clothes as the sun is slowly setting and there’s enough time to finish all my clothes before it gets dark. I left all my things at the office and went to the house. When I first arrived, both Paul and John were disappointed that I didn’t bring the router with me (is that all I’m good for?)! I timed myself and it took me one hour to wash two shirts, two pairs of pants, and a bunch of socks and underwear. I also washed my towel as it was starting to stink (I hope it dries before tomorrow morning). I’m definitely getting a little faster at washing and better at getting my clothes cleaner!

It was gorgeous the entire time I washed my clothes and I admired the scenery set before me.

Something about watching the sun hit the rainforest canopy is so magical. While washing, Peter came by to invite me to a World Cup game tonight. I didn’t end up giving a clear answer as I wasn’t sure if I wanted to stay up super late watching football! In the midst of our conversation I learned that he’s a Seventh-Day Adventist which means he went to church today and not on Sunday! 

I finished washing and hung up everything in my room before I left to go back to the office where everyone was still there! It was past 6:30pm which meant we were all kind of done working for the day. I noticed when I came in through the front, there looked to be fun games played that I missed. Eli told me that it was a competitive hacky sack and that it got pretty heated to the point that Henry got smacked straight in the eye with the sack, ouch (not intentional of course)! We all enjoyed each other’s company and did our own things. Eventually Henry left us, always saying very little as he leaves. 

Hungry, Miraclin and Eli went to the shop and picked me up a package of glucose crackers! There aren’t a ton of crackers in a pack, but enough to calm the hunger just a bit. One thing I’m still getting used to here is the lack of snacks! Back home I could go down to the pantry or fridge any time I’d like and gorge myself with whatever looked good. Here, I consider it lucky if I get a snack!

After munching on the crackers, I found out that Michael had another exam today at 8:00pm! Since he did well the last time I was there, I decided I would hang out there again for fun (there was nothing better to do back at Paul’s house). Luka, Eli’s host, was the proctor which meant just sitting in the same room as Michael and telling him how much time he had left. To not be disruptive, Eli and Miraclin left (Eli did come back a little while later to give Michael some melatonin as he’s had a very difficult time sleeping). I sat and played quietly on my phone while Michael slaved away on his test. 

For some reason his exam didn’t have many questions which left Michael scrambling and wondering if something went wrong in printing it. After all, a million things could go wrong taking an exam half way across the world! Turns out nothing was wrong and it was just a short exam! He finished around 9:30pm. We all left and I went back to the house with the coveted WiFi for Paul and John. There ended up being no dinner tonight which according to Paul was because of “insufficient preparation”. I’m not sure what that could mean as the significance between his words is often quite nebulous! It’s totally fine by me and I ate a Z-Bar I packed for this very moment. 

I relaxed in my room and played a lot more on my phone and blogged before going to bed. By hearing lots of laughing and odd sound effects coming from Paul’s room, I figured out why they want the WiFi so bad (beyond streaming music)! John and Paul love to watch comedic videos on YouTube on the big speaker. It kept me up late but honestly just gave me an excuse to blog more! Regardless, I’m hoping for a wonderful Sunday tomorrow!