I am noticing two disturbing things about myself. One, my English is atrocious. I cannot seem to form a thought or a complete sentence and I am sure my fellow volunteers think I am an idiot. Second, all of my knowledge comes from movies and television. Everything I know from interesting facts to the definition for vexillology comes from movies and TV thus adding to the appearance of complete and utter ineptitude. Now this is how I'm sure I appear to the American volunteers. For the host country nationals I appear to be a South African woman (I've been told I look Zulu) who only speaks English, has a funny accent, cant cook (according to rural South African standards), doesn't want to marry (all women want to get married I'm told) and doesn't seem to actually work. I often feel like I'm playing the fool until the end of my service and at times I laugh and other times I want to cry and scream "I can to do stuff", "I am smart", "I can speak good I think", and "I do read books" (if the television program or movie based on the book is good). I know eventually it will come together and I will work out the cross cultural kinks and appear the confident intelligent woman I now I am. Until then I will collect the hilarious anecdotes and place them in a book that will go down in history as the most grammatical errors in a publication.
