February Little Victories

I keep a journal and every morning I record something that happened the day before that I consider a "little victory". Something that either made me proud, made me happy, or just something good that can always remind me why I'm doing this. So these are my Little Victories from February:

VAC in Andasibe was a good time. Got to relax, see some lemurs, and eat some vazah food. And I'm getting a lot more comfortable traveling on my own

Finally stepped up my cooking game; I made a tortilla, added potatoes, onions, tomatoes and egg which made for a  pretty bomb burrito

My kids are slowly learning that I know Malagasy and they love it. I love these goobers so much

If my basketball game keeps slowly improving then I may actually finish off these two years and not be completely horrible

Four hours straight with 6eme always amazes me how I make it through. I love these little guys but man they're hard work

Learning how to deal with difficult, important people. Not fun, but important life lessons coming from it

Did part of the tree planting bike ride and it was so good to spend a couple days with other volunteers. We've got a cool bunch and the program is a really cool idea

Malagasy know how to dance and can dance forever. I sure don't know how to dance but I really did have fun trying today

Today I was playing soccer near the tsena with a group of students and this lady comes and jumps in goal and then played in our PK shootout too. It was amazing

Thankful for mom and dad and our weekly calls. I just need to talk every week and I appreciate their willingness to let me vent and also talk about the good things

A couple of my university students came over and saw all my vocab on the walls and loved copying it. They were so happy to get new English vocab. It was cute

Taught my kids the days of the week song to the tune of the Adamm's family and they loved it. It was one of my favorite teaching days

Some days I feel like I'm not very good at Malagasy but other times like when I'm helping Niny with her homework and I can explain most things in Malagasy then I feel a little better about my language ability

Adulting. I've been locked in my house grading papers all day. But Madame Fanja was a big help in teaching me how to calculate all the scores

Forced myself to take a little break from grading and went out with some of my students and they/I had a great time learning English and then also teaching me how to dance. That was something...

Spent the weekend with my friend and she had done my hair in the morning and then when we got to her cousin's house her cousin and her cousin's daughter had their hair done the same way too. It was cute

The crocs guy by my market that would always call me vezah and who didn't know I could speak Malagasy for the longest time, for some reason called me Katie today. I don't know when he learned my name or why today he started but yay for integration

All the girls from my university class left to go do something and so it was just me and guys and I thought it would be terrible but they were actually strangely good

Today I handed back the exam to my 6eme classes and I said good job and one of the classes started clapping. They're so funny

I played the Malagasy version of dodgeball today. I had never seen it played before today but it was fun

In the morning was the CEG's cleaning day and so all my students were supposed to be helping to plant trees and clean brush but all the girls just wanted to talk with me

In the evening I had a good conversation with a man who was so excited to talk to me in Malagasy