January 26, 2007
Exciting News!! WE have our pictures posted online thanks to Andy! I can’t really explain them but they are super cool check them out!!
http://thelansfords.com/ftp_photos/jason/cd1/

(Written by Jason)
Ok so I know the last blog that I wrote was pretty negative. It is tough sometimes to fight off the birds of negativity that land on your shoulder and leave the remnants of despair and anguish. But things are not bad here. In fact more and more it is feeling like home.
Turning on the gas to light the oven seems more and more like a normal practice everyday. Seeing cars that zoom by as you wait for the bus feels normal. Sweating out of every pore from sunup to sundown is becoming comfortably familiar. Riding my bike long distances is to get somewhere not just for fun or exercise (which we get plenty of so we can eat most all the carbs we want!). Seeing cows, donkeys, chickens, goats, sheep and having them watch us, feels practically like they expect us to be there.
I mean not everything is like this. The classrooms here are a mess. Some are missing bricks, they have cracks, no electricity or windows that open for the breeze, chalkboards with more holes in it that if it were shot with a shotgun and none of the chairs have backs on them (this will most likely be the reason that Janeen and I look like old people when we return. Well that and the wrinkled skin on our arms, faces, pretty much anywhere that the sun touches…). But the children and the teachers are generally happy. Their happy energy is contagious and becomes difficult to be negative or sad. I love to ride into my little school, having 10 or so kids trailing after me, to see the smiling faces of my colleagues and quickly forming friends.
The strange parts is, is that I am making mostly female friends here as the men are typically very secretive and keep to themselves. I wonder quite often how they view us strange white people in their land. Do they see us only as white land lords like the Boers of South Africa? Or are they generally guarded as a people? These questions haunt me as I search for Basotho male companionship.
So in conclusion, things are not as bleak as I led on. We are good and although there will be many more blogs where I am confounded and confused by life here, we know again that this is the reason we have come. All our love to you!


January 23, 2007
(Written by Jason)
This is our second day of school for the both of us. Janeen if you all did not remember is teaching at the High School and I am working with 2 primary schools to improve teaching and learning techniques. Janeen’s assignment for this term is 3 form A classes (8th Grade) and 1 form B classes (9th Grade). She is also responsible for the library this year which will most likely be a huge project, getting the books and materials organized and making sure that everything is in order. The one great part is, that there is a computer so that we will be able to blog and create spreadsheets and what not for work. We will also be able to print from the computer in office which is really nice!
I can not speak for Janeen, she does that rather well for herself, but I am finding things tiring and wearing at this point. I know that it is only the second week but with the constant heat during the day, the intensity of the sun and the lack of a social network, things can get pretty tense and tiring at home. This is not to say that Janeen and I have not been doing exceptionally. WE are doing great! I am super excited about that. It is that we have a short fuse for each other and other things around us. Needless to say we need your prayers for patience (one that I have been praying repeatedly today) and temperance.
Let me tell you why I am typing this. The first day at my schools was yesterday. The night before happened to be the first big rain storm we have had in some time and so the ground was very muddy and sloppy. Therefore, when I arrived at my school about 5 minutes late, my legs and shoes were covered in poop smelling mud (as most of the mud mixes with cow, sheep, goat, chicken and other animal fecal matter.). I rushed because I thought that I would miss assembly which is supposed to start at 7:45. Silly me, that on the first day of school the principal/head teacher would not show up and all of the teachers stood around until 8:30 waiting for her to unlock the office. Once we did actually start school, we did not actually start school. The kids milled around cleaning out the classes and making sure that there were desks in the rooms. The teachers meanwhile, kind of supervised, yet I noticed more than one kick, hit, spit fight, play at the tap, etc.
Then finally at 10:00 we started our meeting. The whole purpose of the meeting was to meet me. And me, being the long winded person that I am, spent all of 15 minutes talking about what we are going to do together. This put us at 10:15 when the teachers said that they were going to let the kids go home early and teach tomorrow and that I could leave.
This was fine with me as I had to get to my other school for a meeting that was taking place. However after waiting for the bus which was supposed to come at 10:30 for an hour, I decided to start walking. I was finally picked up and taken to my site right around noon.
At the important meeting that I was supposed to attend, there was a large group of parents and students. This got me really excited and I thought we would be doing something really important. Over the next 3 hours of sitting in the burning sun (yes I do get sunburned), listening to a meeting in Sesotho, of which I understood maybe 3%, I was finally introduced to the crowd. My introduction however got me very nervous because the principal introduced me as the newest teacher to their school. I am not a teacher! Let me repeat that! I am not teaching these next 2 years. I am here to be a means of support and resource not a classroom teacher (come to find out that my supervisor had not talked to him and she promised me that she would write a letter to correct this misunderstanding. We will see!). This took a total of 10 minutes to do mind you and I spent 3 hours baking like a biscuit for that!!
All of this to say that it is only Tuesday and I am already fried. I do hope that you find all of this as funny as I do because what else can you do but laugh, right??