We had another day of fertilizing at the farm, this time using Nico’s plan (which we kind of did yesterday, but today it was with permission). Amber got an emergency call from the clinic when we were on our way out the door, so she had to go deliver a baby while we fertilized eggplants. Comparable mornings, I think. I’m pretty sure that she’s delivered like 5 babies since we’ve been here, and she’s now the designated baby deliverer at the clinic because she’s been doing such a good job.
Part of me wonders what the clinic is going to do after Amber leaves. She usually comes home exhausted from running around all day. It’s cool though that they appreciate her and that she’s gotten to experience a lot of different things while working there. It sounds like she’s gotten to be involved with every part of the process, from consultations and paperwork to lab work and treatments.
At breakfast, I had a pancake breakthrough! We have pancakes every other day for breakfast, but they’re a little different from the ones at home… I don’t think they put anything in them to make them rise, so while the ones at home are kind of bready, the ones here are more flat and sticky. Anyway, people usually put stuff on them. Everyone is different – some people put jam, some put groundnut butter (like peanut butter except from groundnuts instead and without the added sugar), some put sugar. I am in the groundnut butter group, and it’s always tasted fine, but my mom suggested adding sugar on top (thanks Mom!) and it changed EVERYTHING. I also added some Milo (chocolate powder that you can also use to make hot chocolate… which I’ve obviously done even though it’s constantly hot here). I used to like pancake day, but now I LOVE it. I’m also probably going to gain back all of that weight I lost during the first two weeks.
I went to school in a great mood because of my pancake, and the day kept getting better! We decided to make it test day since it was the second to last day of school, and we tested them on all of the things we’ve been teaching over the last three weeks. In English, I wrote a paragraph and they had to pull out some nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, articles, pronouns, and prepositions. They didn’t do so well individually, but when I guided them through it and we went over it as a class, it was pretty good. We’ll count it as a success.
Nico made the math test, and I decided to have some fun and take it with the kids. We also had some visitors, Maggie and Evans, two people who work with VCO (the volunteer organization). We tested the kids on comparing fractions, shapes, subtraction, multiplication, and writing numbers in word form. They all did well on the test (Maggie and Evans included), so that was encouraging! Just an fyi to everyone though, 40 is spelled forty, not fourty. Common mistake.
Nico and I found a bag of balloons at the volunteer house and decided to use them for the elective. We played a game where we split the class in half, drew a line on the ground in the classroom, and for 45 seconds, the teams had to try to put all of the balloons on the other team’s side of the line. At the end of the time, everyone had to freeze and we counted to see which team had less balloons on their side to decide the winner. It went so much better than I expected. The kids loved it, and we decided to save the balloons to use again tomorrow.
I passed out after lunch, apparently slept through my alarm, and Avy woke me up for dinner. Hm. I guess I’m still not getting enough sleep. Anyway, we went out and bought some snacks for school tomorrow to celebrate the last day of summer school. I can’t believe it’s almost over! Real school starts next week and it’s going to be so weird.