Alright, I’m going to start off today telling you about a few things I forgot to mention in the past week but wanted to bring up. The first is about scorpions. One walked through tutoring last week and I was like what is that? And R, an 11 year boy, was like well that’s a scorpion, like it was completely normal. I told him we don’t have those where I come from! Secondly, in frequenting different markets, I have now had three men try to get me to barter with my hair band for something they are selling. Even when I am wearing it! They always say they want the nice American made hair band for their sisters. Hey, I’ll trade one for some of your goods! But it’s not actually an even trade, unfortunately. They always want kwacha with it, too, so I’ve learned to ignore it now. But it’s pretty random.
Anyway….on to today. The morning was pretty typical. Spent the extra time this morning prepping for tomorrow. In ESL, we read for the entire period. The women seemed more into the book this time than the last day we did this, so that’s encouraging. Then, over the lunch hour, I finished prepping for tomorrow! Mrs. A had left us a tasty treat of fritters on one of the desks, so we had the oh so healthy lunch of fritters…..Then a run was in order. It’s still hot outside in the daytime, but I can tell the cooler weather is coming because a few days ago I would not have tried running outside in the noontime heat. Today, however, it was ok.
Kids are funny. And cute. A lot. Here are just a few cute/funny things I saw some youngsters do today. P, a little boy aged 1.5 put on his mom’s shoes in English class and walked around the church for quite some time with them on. I had that same boy cracking up while tickling his feet and playing peek-a-boo while the women were busy writing a response to our novel reading today. I saw preschoolers climb on top of each other just to see what I was doing through the window. I saw S, a preschool boy, wearing a fuzzy vest that reminded me of Big Bird to church tonight. I was used as a roadway today for many of my preschoolers’ toy cars during playtime. I saw little kids look around in confusion as I bopped them on the head lightly and pretended that I didn’t. I saw a little girl’s face light up as I gave her part of my offering money to place in the offering bag at church tonight for me. I saw kids get really excited at taking a picture of them and showing them on my camera and then follow me around asking me for "snaps" (pictures). I heard several kids laugh as I called one of my 11 year old boys by the new nickname I've given him. J
That being said, preschool was a bust today. The kids were little angels to start off the day, but things slowly slid downhill. But every teacher has those days. It definitely means that T and I will need to regroup and rethink our preschool game plan so that we are still being effective and teaching our children. A lot of correcting was done today, and the kids—as kids anyway—didn’t like that. These children are smart, though, because they will pretend they do not understand English for that part of the conversation. Tricky, tricky. But I love em still. There’s just something VERY different about living on campus with the children you teach. I see the preschoolers multiple times each day and they can kind of act however they want when they are running around campus since they are not watched that closely, so why should the “school time” with Miss A and Miss T be any different? Why should they have to act differently? Oh, I can almost see their little brains thinking these things….But, chin up, next time will be better, if T and I work hard to make it better.
After preschool I blew off some steam with a bike ride. Unfortunately, I was creepily followed home by a man in a truck who stopped to talk to me…I like the friendliness of the people here when I’m running or biking, and I even sometimes like their frequent compliments, even if they do go too far sometimes, but I can do without strange men following me to someone else’s house and waiting for me there for a few minutes. No thank you. I hightailed it out of there and ran back into my preschool kids on campus who were once again as loveable as they were before school today. J
T and I headed off to church at 18 hours for Lenten service. It’s week four and we haven’t been in an actual church for Lent since week one! It was good to be back. J All the missionaries go to the church on campus for Lent, too, so it’s like an even bigger family than normal. Plus Pastor DS of the D&L bunch preached tonight, so it was nice to hear him preach. After church, we went out in the reception line and greeted everyone in the church, as is custom. I’m really going to miss that when I leave!
After church, T and I enjoyed a later supper from Mrs. A. We must have been hungry….there was a ton of food and it was all gone in a flash! The evening was spent preparing for teacher training on Friday and talking/planning our upcoming trip to Malawi.
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