February 14 "Trivia, Picnics, Tattoo Rubbings, and V Day"

The dreaded day that has been haunting us since we left the States is here. Well, actually, I don’t think Valentine’s Day is bad, but it feels like we have been bombarded with advertisements in London and Lusaka about it constantly for the past week and a half. I sure wasn’t expecting that! But I did get to eat some delicious chocolates from a suitor back in the States today. J But anyway, on to the good stuff; it was our first day of teaching! We started off the day with tutoring, and had eight children between the ages of 9 and 15 for the morning session, after turning away three preschoolers who wanted to learn, too! The kids liked our introduction activities. T and I even came up with some Zambian trivia questions which fit in kind of with a game I remembered seeing on Legends of the Hidden Temple. We had fun. J Upon first observation, it looks like the students need a lot of guidance with some basic facts. Back to the fundamentals. Right after that, we had our first English lesson with the ladies. We played “Going on a picnic” in a few different versions—thanks Dr. B!  After doing a KWL chart (see edu profs, we did retain some things you taught!), we had them reading stories at their levels (ahem, differentiation, hello?!?!) and answering some reading comp questions. Boy, did those three hours this morning go by quickly! The afternoon brought on preschool, and T and I had planned some pretty spiffy activities to help with learning letters and body parts. The ABC chant went even better than I had hoped! The students were SOOOO eager to learn and so excited. J I have been so excited to teach preschool all day; what will my middle schoolers back home think of me now? The rest of the day was spent block and lesson planning, complete with a dinner of nshima, laying on the floor and racking our brains to think up activities, and listening to Mulan. Lastly, my mother and sister commented the other day that I haven’t done anything embarrassing or klutzy yet. Well, let me just fill you all in with the daily happenings on the klutziness level for today: I spilled water on the floor twice (all over), broke my second flipflop here (playing duck duck goose), got ink all over my hands (from doing LOTS hand copying), random bruises have popped up, I got a heat rash, I always miss when squishing the spiders, I slide across the cement outside all the buildings and almost fall daily, and I ran into my bed frame. So there. Now my mom and sister can be happy. Final thought for the day: the most random part of the day was when all my preschoolers were rubbing my tattoo simultaneously to see if it would come off! People here are transfixed by it!