"Supafajistics" and Minecraft (Monday 6/29)

The music wasn’t blasting until 7:00am instead of 6:00am this morning! I enjoyed the extra sleep and rested until Paul came to my room at around 7:45am asking me to get up. My bed was too warm and cozy to get up so I insisted on laying there for just 10 more minutes! He obliged and I enjoyed the extra time. Eventually I got out of bed and found a lot going on in the main room: food being cooked, music blasting, Paul on his phone, and water boiling! I said a brief good morning to Paul and he asked me when we would like to go up to the office. I told him, “8:35am” forgetting that we needed to eat breakfast first (I’m still getting used to this new schedule). Before leaving back to my room to organize some things and brush my teeth, I started to boil myself some more water. There was already a bucket of hot water prepared, but I wasn’t sure if that was for me. At this point I have a feeling for how long the kettle takes and went back to the main room right before it finished. I was pouring my water into my own bucket when Morrine stopped me and put in the large bucket full of water for me to use! I was very thankful for all of the water but it was too much! To make sure the water didn’t scald me, I had to dump some of it out into another bucket so the cold water would fit. Having this much water to spare once more was wonderful! 

With the bucket bath finished, I got ready and waited for breakfast. I assumed it would be a simple meal of rice and avocado, but Morrine brought out a whole feast. We ate rice, beans, cabbage, avocado, and scrambled eggs! The beans were some of the best I’ve tasted out here and the eggs were amazing as well. By the end of the meal I was completely stuffed which is not how I always feel after two pieces of mandazi and some tea!

Paul ended up leaving before I did so I quickly grabbed all of my stuff and the WiFi router and left for the office. Eli and Michael were already there (frankly surprised to see Michael here so early) and got straight to work (well Eli lagged behind for a bit and would help when he was finished with his project). We reviewed Math Club materials until Mr. Chesco came in asking me to teach computers once more. As a reminder, we got over 20 Chromebooks to use that all needed to be set up. I meant to get them all ready yesterday, but since we didn’t have the passwords, nor did I have time being at church all day, I simply could not! Now that we had the time, we got straight to getting them set up. To my dismay, we ran into the same password problem as Saturday. The main VST accounts would not work and Paul, who’s been helping with all of this, insisted we should just use his burner account to get the ball rolling (a burner account is an account that someone creates that is for temporary use). I initially resisted as setting up these computers the “wrong way” without official VST accounts would mean that we would have to undo all of this work at a later date. Eventually I gave in and figured that it’d be best to get the computers into the hands of the students than have it be correct. However, we ran into another problem with this burner account. Unbeknownst to us, a burner account can only set up so many Chromebooks before no longer working. What a frustrating experience! Therefore, we only got a handful of computers to work. 

The computer class was still going, but I stayed back to help set up the computers further while Mr. Chesco delivered them to the classroom for the students to use. The working computers were exhausted and the class ended so we decided to pack everything up for another day. We needed a response from Jonathan to update the VST accounts, but being in the US meant he was sound asleep when we needed him most! I worked a bit more until it was time for everyone to go to lunch. Paul was working with Hosea so Miraclin and I waited for quite a long time outside of the office for us to even go. In fact, it took so long that Michael had already gotten back from his “lunch” that turned out to be leftover breakfast. Dissatisfied with his meal, Michael wanted to go with Paul and I for lunch which Paul agreed to. 

Before going to the house to eat, Paul needed to go to the shop to get matches, body oil, and crackers for Michael and I! We walked back to the house and hung around the main room. Paul had a hotspot going from his phone so Michael and I connected to it for a bit before it turned off. The password for the hotspot is “Mrpopular@Vst”! I’m glad he’s embracing the name I gave him! To add to the noise of the room, there was a laptop playing dubbed Asian shows the entire time which made Paul want to show us a video on how to speak Chinese. For some reason or another, he jokes around and acts like he knows how to speak it! Personally I think it’d be beneficial if I watched some Swahili videos instead! After the Chinese video, he wanted to learn about the history of Rwanda which led him to wanting to learn the history of Colorado. Randomly selecting a video, he chose a 30 minute documentary on the geological history of Colorado! It was fascinating and I realized how much of Colorado’s beauty I have and have not seen. Michael being the Texan he is, wanted to watch one on Texas but Paul was on a call which immediately shuts off the hotspot.

During this video time, Paul kept on saying that he was feeling “supafajistics” and "expeditious" like last night and Michael and I finally realized he’s trying to say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! It finally all makes sense!

Lunch was finally ready at 3:20pm (I cannot overstate how thankful I am that lunch is prepared for us)! I was very hungry at this point and munched on rice, beans, greens, cabbage, and tons of avocado (along with fresh tea). Michael was surprised how much avocado I ate, I think I ate 3 whole ones! The meal was great and I was very pleased to see that Michael, who is kind of a picky eater, enjoyed the meal thoroughly! Morrine cooks with a lot of fresh ginger that adds a wonderful warm taste to the meal! 

We finished up and went back to the office to work some more. Michael is effectively finished with his class so he helped Eli, Henry, and I on Math Club materials! We work in pairs (I’m with Eli) and get a decent chunk done while having fun. Our progress was quite slow, but it's getting completed bit by bit!

After two hours of working, Paul came in to get us to go play football! He acted like he was speaking in Chinese and telling us that he even dreams in Chinese; he is quite the character. There was a lot on my plate that I wanted to get finished so only Eli went. I wanted to go, but my section of Math Club and my IT application needed to be finished. The IT application is almost done!

Once I finished with my work, I noticed that Henry and Michael started playing Minecraft together on their laptops! Of course I had to join. It felt weird playing Minecraft all the way out here in Tanzania, but I can never say no to playing it. It was a ton of fun and I got to finally see the “fun” side of Henry come out in its entirety. I’ve seen it peek out when playing chess or soccer, but here he was showing nothing but smiles and laughter! He’s typically all work and no play so it was refreshing to see him finally enjoy himself.

However the Minecraft fun could not last forever as it was time for Michael to go take his final exam for his summer class! Since I’m a good luck charm after all, I stayed and sat in the room to stay productive. I also “needed” to wait for Paul’s “gift” of the WiFi as he calls it. I blogged and put the finishing touches on my IT application (all that’s left is a recording of myself answering some questions). 

I was very productive and even got to call back home for a bit, but needed to get back to the house as Paul really wanted me back home (even without the WiFi, shocking). He was very tired and wanted to make sure I ate dinner. I packed my things and walked back home in the dark. I met him outside of his room where we talked and Morrine got dinner ready. Dinner ended up being a very delicious banana, potato, beef stew! Apparently Paul ordered it and had it delivered (a commodity I think is nice, but not worth it when money is tight). During the meal we talked a lot and went through my camera roll as there was no WiFi to blast music or watch a video. 

With my meal finished and belly full, I went to my room and blogged! In the middle of my blogging session I saw that my laptop was starting to connect to the internet. I also heard someone try to come in through the front door which made me think that Paul must’ve walked all the way back to the office to get the WiFi! A little while later, a bright light comes in through my window and there’s a tap on the glass… It was Michael! He was kind enough to bring down the WiFi after his exam and passed the router to me. We talked for a moment and he told me he felt pretty good about the exam!

It was 11:00pm at this point so he needed to get back to his house to go to bed! The one night that Paul goes to bed super early is the night we get the WiFi delivered. I finished blogging shortly thereafter and went to bed!