Most of the teachers have have returned, and we got down to business. We all taught classes today, and the children are such good students! Even in the classes where teachers were still on holiday, the students sat quietly by themselves in the classroom, until the next class period, when they hoped a teacher would be available. If 30 kids were alone in a classroom in America for hours, when the teacher returned, I can't imagine the mischief they would have gotten into!
In the morning, we went to the lower primary, where the youngest kids go to school. They were very excited to see us, but one little boy cried, and clung to his teachers legs as he looked on at us in horror, having never seen a white person before.
Later, we taught English to the older kids, using the popular American song "Hot and Cold" by Katy Perry, because the chorus uses synonyms and antonyms with lyrics like "Because you're hot and your cold" "you're in and you're out, " you're up and you're down," "you're black and you're white." Meredith played the guitar and the kids LOVED it.
Then, the next teacher hadn't come, so we learned the words to Rihanna's song "Umbrella," and once the kids knew it, we videotaped it, and we will send it to Rihanna.
The days are so long here, and we do so much! I went to Swahili class with the 5th grade today. It was very hard, because we were learning words like cylinder and pentagon, and zig-zag line, but I tried and the students and the teacher helped a lot.
We also brought out some of the jump ropes we had brought for the trip, and the girl got so excited! We took a picture of one of the girls with the jump rope weeds they use, but the problem is they break easily. The girls played for hours, and we jumped on into the red of the setting sun, and until the first star lit up in the sky and we were called away for dinner.
The most rewarding experience for me was teaching the directors of the orphanage about computers. I showed them how to open a document and type, capitalize, bold, use the shift key, save etc, and they were just ecstatic. They have a few computers, but they so old they are almost unuseable, so they have to go into town to use the cyber café and send email. Their printer is also broken, so printing assignments for school is a real challenge and expensive to type documents and print in town. None of the children know how to use computers either. One laptop for the school would make such a difference in all of their lives. We will try.
-Laura
P.S. Check out my friend Alex’s blog for more stories and pictures!
www.alexbreinin.blogspot.com
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