You would think it's Friday from the club music blaring outside my door, but it's just another throw-down on a Wednesday night for the volunteers. I'm torn between joining them and sticking in the trusty earplugs for another night. I'm old and exhausted and where are my socks it's freezing.  

Today I took one of the massive diesel stick-shift (or manual, to the British) trucks out for a spin, aka to the police station. One of the volunteers had her ipod stolen and somehow I became the translator between the policewoman on duty and the victim, a Dutch girl. I think I'm slowly becoming an expert at distinguishing and translating among multiple foreign accents. Half the time I speak to people who don't speak English, and the other half to people with any other conceivable accent besides an American one. I referred to the trashcan as the "bin" the other day. If I avoid an identity crisis, I may become one of those worldly people who confidently fuse multiple accents into one unidentifiable globalspeak. Can I put that on my resume?

Anyway, she said in Zambenglish, "Where have the man gone, have you got him now?" and she said in Dutchenglish, "No I don't have my ipod now, it is gone because someone stole it," and so on. After that was sorted out - ? - figured out - I went to reading club with some volunteers. I taught the girl I was working with some words, like "jacuzzi" and "rollercoaster," and then realized they were irrelevant in the context of her life. Did books for children used to be this hard?? I scrapped it and scribbled my own (highly entertaining) story on a piece of paper with better words and we read that. Then I looked around and noticed the other volunteers were just hanging out with each other, as the remaining kids ran around the classroom. Kind of annoying. The burgeoning project manager within prompted me to reprimand the volunteers, but I'd rather put off being their official boss until I'm officially qualified. 

There's a pretty sweet remix of living on a prayer on right now, unless "Chop My Money" comes on (look it up now if you don't know it, if you're in Africa you're well aware of its greatness) you can find me here, passed out in my bed with no regrets.