You can tell how hard I’ve been working by the amount of books I’ve been reading. Yes, we did travel a lot in the beginning, but by my third day in Zambia, I had finished four of my ten books for the trip. Yikes! The past two weeks have been busy, busy, busy, and thus, I have read significantly less, only 90 pages total! See, that shows you how hard I’ve been working! This morning had an excellent start as the computer that we use to print things would not turn on, so T and I took turns frantically hand copying a 4 page story while the other was teaching our kids about celebrating and parties in time for English class. It just so happens, that we only had 2 students in English today, too, because the women were taking their kids to a children’s health clinic. So we didn’t really need the story right away; oh what fun. So English turned in to two one-on-one sessions, which was actually really beneficial because I was able to work with our lowest learner and catch her up on the letter sounds. I found myself using strategies/materials from my child tutoring sessions with her, and I think it helped. Hopefully T and I will be able to find the time to give her the focused time that she needs. Today also renewed my respect for preschool teachers; I could never do it fulltime. Yes, the kids are adorable, especially when you hear them saying their chants all morning that we have been working on the past few weeks, without any guidance, as they run around campus. They’re learning. J And those of you who know me and my “Good Job” chant would be happy to know that the preschoolers love it and learned it in only one day. J However, they have started to realize that we cannot understand them, so they got a little loosey-goosey today. In the first hour and a half, I loving dealt with the following: hitting, stealing, pushing, yelling, running around the room, biting other children, and hurting others. It was lovely. But try to get 2 and 5 year old kids who don’t understand English to say sorry to each other. Now that was a challenge. Yes, language is definitely a barrier in these situations, but boy, did the students understand that they were naughty little children in trouble when I made them all sit in their desks silently for a minute; I didn’t hear a peep! After break we reconciled with a game of kickball, which resulting in my breaking of another flip flop. I can never decide if I want to run on the stones in bare feet or chance another flip flop’s mortality….In other news (aka, not school), Mrs. A made us guava punch today—delish! And a super tasty dinner, but she makes us excellent dinners most nights. I can’t wait for the pumpkin leaves again—so good! Here are some of the noteworthy things that happened while preparing for tomorrow’s lessons: 1) I spent over an hour hand drawing a replica of the ABC picture chart in full color from memory. I do hope it gets used—often. 2) My room is home to many huge spiders daily, but I thought it was interesting that tonight I could only see a few legs because it was hiding under the crown molding. 3) The men who are staying at the other sem guest house across from ours have been testing all week to enter the LBI and about ten of them sat outside today, singing a beautiful religious song in various keys, all in a cappella. It was beautiful, even though I didn’t know the words. 4) It gets really warm in our house, especially at night time, but we need to keep the windows closed at night because of the bugs—no screens. So, I find it ironic that I keep the windows closed to keep the bugs away, but I end up going outside to lesson plan, at least part of the night, where all the bugs are, just because it gets so warm!
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