Mi lobi joe for troe

An early start again: we were expected at the police station at 8am, to go to the ministry to get our passports checked.
“When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”
So we arrived about an hour late (and still actually were an hour early, go figure).
It took us half a day to get everything sorted out (and a lot of driving from here to there and back again), but eventually everything was ok. Our “Tour guides” also took us to a place where we could rent a bike. Marij and I now ‘own’ our own little bicycles to go to school (daily taxis would turn out to become a pretty expensive thing)… I just hope we don’t get lost tomorrow!
When we finally got back home, some of us went to the cybercafé, while the rest stayed homework for school. After dinner (yummy hot dogs!) the rest of us made the trip to the internet café to upload part of our blog already and talk to friends. Being this busy, I didn’t even realise I missed them so much! And an hour is gone so quickly when you have lots to talk about…
Back home for some late night chit chat and a good rest.

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The alarm went off too soon (yes, again! I’m just not used to it anymore!) And I had a horrible night. Woke up at 1am, sweating like a pig and feeling extremely nauseous. Took a pill to calm down my stomach and didn’t have much problems after that, though it did f*ck up my sleep…
Went to our school again today, by bike. And we didn’t get lost! (Yay for us!) We spent a whole day of observing local teachers doing their job. Did notice that discipline isn’t something they’ve heard of yet. Chaos everywhere, which is very exhausting cause you need extra energy to be ably to concentrate on what they’re saying. I’m glad school is only half a day over here. Got back home (again without making any wrong turn) and had a quick lunch.
We managed to lock ourselves out on the terrace… But luckily we have very friendly neighbours and Roché came to the rescue! We got our bikini’s out and just chilled out a bit.
Roché took us out for ‘bakabana’, a baked banana. Then off to the supermarket for some last minute shopping and Roché took us on a little sight seeing trip around the block. Back home, we quickly did the dishes and cooked dinner.
Only one more day and it’ll be weekend! (We arranged to have Fridays off to work on our project) So more chilling, relaxing and doing nothing! :p

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Last day of getting up early! We all had breakfast together and then went our own ways.
Observing the fourth and third grade was our job today. After the raising of the flag and the national anthem (like every morning), all kids went to their own classroom.
The fourth grade wasn’t any better than the others we had already seen: a lot of noise and running around. And while the teacher was writing everything down on the blackboard, the kids had fun switching their shoes and parading through the classroom.
After the break it was time for the third grade. Apparently this is the worst one. All kids were just walking around and it seems that hitting, kicking, pulling and pushing each other is a daily activity.
After lunch we hung out with the guys from our neighbourhood. We had our personal chefs for the night: Gero and Roché, our neighbours from across the street, promised us they’d cook dinner.
Three hours after he started, we were all starving and ready for some food, but still no sign of it… At 10.30pm everything was finally ready and we had the most delicious bami we had ever had!
We were all exhausted from this last day, so after dishes we chatted a bit more with our chefs and went to bed. I am looking forward to not having to get up at 6 for once!

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Friday today and got out of bed at 10.30am. a quick trip to the supermarket and then sandwiches for breakfast.
We decided that today would be cleaning day, so we went on a little search to find the brooms, buckets and detergent. We rid the kitchen from all ants, cleaned our bedrooms, the living room and the terrace. By noon we were all sweating like pigs, but we were done! So time for lunch. Afterwards, half of us went on a trip to the Hermitage Mall while the other half stayed home for some chilling, relaxing and sunbathing. Even though it’s rain season, we had a few days with loads of sunshine, so we’re definitely not complaining!
After about half an hour of sunbathing the three of us decided we wanted to go swimming. So we invited our neighbour and took a taxi into town. At the swimming pool we stood before a closed door: seems that the pool wouldn’t reopen till 7pm (it was 5.30 at that time)… So we headed into town for a drink till it was time to head back. Marij en Roché also felt like going for a swim, so when we got back to the pool they arrived as well.
After about an hour of swimming and playing, Roché needed to go to football practice and we went to get something to eat. A delicious eggroll with “kousenband” (kind of beans) and “bakabana” (baked banana).
When we got home, there wasn’t a sign of the other two and everything was dark. Seemed that they were taking a nap. By midnight we went to wake them up, since we had plans to go out today. Roché showed up right as we were all dressed and off we went to Zsa Zsa Zsu, the local disco.
We had a blast! It was pretty empty, so loads of space for dancing and moving. To our surprise there weren’t many Surinam people, most of the people inside were Caucasian (probably students as well) and even the music wasn’t much different from the music we play at home.
By 5am our feet hurt like hell and so we left to go back home. Thank god we can sleep in late tomorrow.

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The next day was a very relaxed day. Some of us headed into town to go food shopping, while we stayed home to work for school (after all, we’re not on vacation). Luckily we didn’t have the temptation we had the past few days: the sun was hidden behind a layer of dark clouds and soon rain started pouring down. We kinda feared our city housemates would be soaked by the time they got home, but fortunately they found shelter at the house of the other Belgian students.
When it had finally stopped raining, we got a nice surprise. Our neighbours from across the street had company. And one of them had brought a cute, sweet cuddly little monkey with him! He did seem to like me, since I got a thorough grooming. Even though it was one of the cutest things I had ever seen, it was also very sad to see the little thing with a chain around it’s waist…
Spaghetti for dinner tonight. Apart from the fact that the sauce had too much pepper, the pasta was too salty and the meatballs had turned into schnitzels (the shoppers took the wrong kind of meat home), it was very delicious!
Today and tomorrow is washing day and I was the first one to try the weird washing machine out. Once you get the hang of it, it’s not that hard and everything came out of the machine in the same condition as how it went in (but it was clean!).
Another nice fact: Marij brought a hammock with her, and we tested it out today. Very cosy and comfortable for napping! ^^

Mi lobi joe all for troe!
(I love you all a lot!)

P.S. I'm trying to upload a few pics to my photobucket, hopefully it'll work, since the internetcafe has a very slow connection...
http://s199.photobucket.com/albums/aa171/Myrea1986/Suriname/