If You Give a Mouse a Potato

The true story of the mischievous rat that lives in my couch

Based on the book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Joffe Numeroff

If you give a mouse a potato (by accident)

He’s not going to ask for another one.

He’ll just take it, without permission.

When you buy more potatoes,

You’ll probably hide them inside a bucket so he can’t get at them.

When you want to cook them

You’ll discover they got all moldy

And realize you’ve been tricked

By a small fur-ball

With a brain the size of an almond.

When the potatoes are polished off,

He’ll probably start in on the eggs

Which will make you really mad…

So mad, you’ll probably bait a mouse trap with a dollop of your precious peanut butter

And hide it behind his favorite hideout:

The living room couch

Which will lead you to discover

That he is actually not a mouse at all, but a rat

No wonder he didn’t eat the peanut butter;

He is too big to fit through the mousetrap door.

You know this because you saw him poke his head out of the chair in the living room.

But that’s ok, you didn’t like that chair anyway.

It looks squashy but it’s not.

Since he couldn’t reach the peanut butter

And you hid the potatoes

And Nauela hasn’t sold eggs in 8 months

And raw onions probably make rats cry too

He’ll might chew all the labels off your containers

And then start in on the containers themselves.

Even if there’s nothing in them.

He won’t realize until it’s too late

That he’s chewed through the bottom of a bottle of bleach

And spilled it everywhere.

But he won’t learn from his mistake.

He’ll also chew through a bottle of oil.

But after letting the oil loose

He’ll feel a rumble in his stomach.

So he’ll decide to try the onions after all.

He may hide a bunch of them behind your charcoal sack in the corner.

The charcoal will make him think that

Maybe he wants a potato.

And chances are, if he eats one potato,

He’s going to take another without asking.

Left: mousetrap. Right: Stuffing that he pulled
out of the couch and left in a pile. Bed? Soft landing?
 Playground? You'll have to ask him yourself.

This liter of oil was full when I left my house
one week before. Now most of it is on the kitchen
floor and sunken into the wooden table.

He keeps a collection of onions behind the charcoal. Sneaky.

50 First Days of School

When I was in high school, the first day of school was always full of excitement, nervousness, and kids trying to arrive to class on time, thinking “this year I’ll be organized and do this the whole year.” In the high school I’m in now, it’s basically the opposite. It is decidedly not cool, and also pointless, to show up on time (or at all) on the first day. Let me give you a sample of something I wrote last January, to illustrate what the [official] first day of school was like.

I was told that school was supposed to start at 6:30. At 6:51, it’s still just me and an empty schoolyard. 

 At 7:09, kids in uniforms start showing up. I ask someone when school starts. Them: “7:00.” Me: “oh…right.” Silly me. 

 7:37, secretary arrives, opens the school building, still no sign of other teachers or director. 

 8:39, I have no idea what is going on, besides nothing. Is there no such thing as wasting time here? What the heck am I supposed to be doing right now? Did I misunderstand something? Do they know something I don’t? How did they all know not to get here when the director said to get here? 

 9:24, enough of this crap. I’m going home. 

5 weeks later: I’m on my way to school to see if they need help with anything, and I run into my director who’s on his way out. “Actually, we do have a problem that maybe you can help us with. Let’s go sit down and talk about it.” He turns around and I follow him back towards his office. “The 8th graders are without an English teacher, because he left.” 

 So I am now teaching English instead of physics.

I felt like I had mentally prepared for so many first days of school. I was prepared for the official first day of school; it didn’t happen. Then we made a schedule and I thought to myself “now school will really start,” and hardly any kids showed up. Then kids and teachers showed up, and I thought, “this is how it will be for the rest of the year.” Then a month after school started, I switched subjects. Then in March, we made the official roster and re-assigned kids their students ID numbers.

The point of the story is, I’ve learned from last year. I know that there will be no teachers, students, classes, or schedule the first official week of classes. That week, I determined which teacher would teach which subject (often, there is no teacher for a certain subject, such as Agriculture or Design, so a Biology or Math teacher must take over a subject they didn’t study) organized the schedule with my director (which is still being re-organized as of now, 3 weeks into the year) and read a lot.

This year, instead of preparing for a first day of school, I try to prepare for anything.

But it turns out, there’s always something you didn’t imagine happening, and consequently, are not prepared for it. How do you prepare for that?

I saw this sign on a plane and thought it was funny.
It describes perfectly the first day of school.

School uniform: white on top and black on
 the bottom. Minus the sunglasses.

Malaria...use your net or you'll regret!

(title taken from the Malaria Rap we wrote during a conference today. Yes, we sometimes do work, too.)

Work out in the field is occasionally interrupted by a Peace Corps conference, which means a few important things:

-         Seeing other volunteers

-         Paid transportation to a city

-         Staying in a hotel with running water and electricity

-         And, most importantly of course, meetings about projects, teaching, safety, and health

Don't be deceived, conferences are not boring. On the last day,
we sang a song about malaria prevention,
barbershop-quartet-morphed-into-rap style.

We had meetings in the mornings and medical check-ups in the afternoons. I am pleased to announce that I am healthy and cavity-less. Apparently tomatoes, onions, and side-feti (see future blog post about food) don’t bore dark holes in your teeth as much as junk food does.

On Monday we held a year-anniversary memorial service for Lena and Alden. I’ll include some pictures because it was a touching service that wasn’t actually a service. Instead of sitting and listening to people talk, there were interactive stations set up at the Peace Corps office. At one station, there were markers and crayons, and we wrote letters to their families. At another station, we could visit a small orchard, where saplings were being planted. Lena loved mangos and Alden loved coconuts, so each type of tree was planted, among others. At a third station, we could paint a flat rock to be put in an area under a tree where people were planting seedlings in a garden (which got trampled with all the activity, but hopefully they’ll spring back to life). 

Painting stones. I don't know who made the one to the right,
but I love it! It's a woman carrying a baby on her back.

Sean plants some grass around the stones.

At the last station, a few volunteers had painted a mural and prepared one white block for each volunteer in our group, Moz 17, to paint. At the end, Carl (the director of Peace Corps Mozambique) revealed a plaque that will live in the garden. The result was beautiful.

Last night we had a pool party with the entire group, and we voted on some awards to give out. A group of us arrived at the party a little late, so most of Moz 17 was already there. I should have known what was going to happen when another volunteer so kindly took my bag off my shoulder, and I saw people doggy paddling with their shirts on. But before I could process the scene, my feet were off the ground and chlorinated water was accelerating towards me at 9.8 meters/second/second. It was actually always a secret wish of mine to be thrown into a pool with all my clothes on, so, thanks Nate.

Leah hangs out in wet jeans, plotting revenge on an unsuspecting Nate.

Laurie reads out the awards, from the safety of her chair.
She eventually did get thrown in.
There was no escaping.

My colleagues voted for me for this superlative!

And, this is what we are doing right now: celebrating our last night together for 7 more months (we all go back to our sites tomorrow), eating ice cream and pie, celebrating Hoang's birthday, pretending to be carrots.