Tala

Food, Kenya, Pictures

A month or so ago I a colleague and I bought a chicken at the local market. We took it back to his house and proceeded to slaughter and eat it. African style. I never got around to posting pictures, so here you go!

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Although I was good at holding the chicken, the killing part is another story entirely. I figured if I saw it once or twice I might be able to do it myself. I am proud to say that I cannot even imagine what kind of instincts I would have to muster up (not to mention stifling a gag reflex) in order to actually kill one myself. I do believe that humans evolved as meat eaters (and of course, killers!), but wow… no thanks! I guess I just don’t like meat THAT much! In fact, a whole week will go by and I will have not eaten any meat!

By the way, in Swahili “kuku” means chicken. :)

Kenya

Holy Rosary College has now arrived to the 21st century: we now have a website! You can check it out here.

While my main work here is teaching students and training staff, one of my other responsibilities was to create a website for the college. Well I’m proud to announce that we are now on the world wide web, but before you applaud me, applaud Mark! Mark was the VSO volunteer here before me, and he was the one who originally created the website. Unfortunately, sometime between him leaving in 2006 and me arriving in late 2007, the website disappeared.

A few months ago I stumbled upon a copy of the website on one of our servers here at the college.  After some procrastination I finally got around to updating the college’s contact information and making some phone calls to some people in high places. Behold, Holy Rosary’s website — back from the dead!

Thanks again, Mark!

Kenya, Teaching

Well it’s official, I’m a teacher now!  A new semester is here and I’ve now taught for a week and a day!  It’s the beginning of week two and I’ve had five class sessions already.  This semester I’ll be teaching three units: Networking Essentials and Introduction to Programming and Algorithms for the students, and Introduction to Linux for the staff.  That’s one class every day, so I’ll be very busy writing lesson plans, assignments, and continuous assessment tests (CATs)…

On the first day of class I usually write my name, the course number, and the course title on the board.  Last semester I wrote “Mr. Orth” and a few students giggled; I guess they could see right through the act, as I’m not really the formal type.  This semester I told my students to please call me “Alan.”  Among other things, I also tell them to please ask questions.

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