An Action Packed Day

Posted on September 14, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

I’m finally starting to feel like I hit my groove at the farm, and that’s usually when things start going wrong. As soon as you’re feeling too confident, something happens to put you back in your place. We sowed another corn field this morning, and I was actually managing to move at an acceptable pace! I think I have the technique figured out. Things were going great! Anddd then I was an idiot and started being overconfident and managed to cut my pinky finger with my machete.

I was so embarrassed and we only had about 15 minutes left and I didn’t want the guys to know what had happened, so I was planning on just pretending nothing was wrong and finishing the work. Great plan except that apparently fingertip cuts bleed excessively. After about 1 minute of trying to keep going, I had to stop and signal to Amber to come help me. We didn’t have a band aid and didn’t want to ask, so she took the random objects (some string and a water bag) I had in my bag and pulled something together. Once we got back to the house, she cleaned it out and put an actual band aid on. It’s really not that bad (so Mom, stop freaking out).
After breakfast, we went around to the three schools we’re working with. We’ve spent a lot of time at EP, but I hadn’t been to Baptist or the junior high yet. We met the headmasters of both schools and talked a bit about what we can do to help out. Baptist still doesn’t have a teacher for P3, so that’s good…

Anyway, today was still a cleaning day so the kids were outside, chopping down some of the tall grass around the school with machetes. I’m glad that a bunch of 10 year olds can handle their machetes better than I can. It was a good morning for my ego.

In the afternoon, James had plans to go to the orphanage to train their soccer team, and we all decided to go with him. I haven’t been yet, and I was interested to see it. That’s where the food from the farm goes. It’s about a 20 minute tro ride and a 15 minute walk from our house. I was actually pleasantly surprised by the situation there. They have about 35 kids, and they all have their own beds and there are flush toilets and running water. They definitely aren’t living in luxury or anything, but it’s actually probably a step up from our house. The floors are even tiled!

WAIT. There’s more. They have a washing machine. Yes, an actual clothes washing machine. And it works! I almost lost my mind. I actually had a dream last week where we got a new house with a washing machine and I almost cried I was so happy. It’s funny the things you end up missing… I don’t think I would have put that on my list ahead of time. I probably would have mentioned running water, but I’m actually doing just fine without that. Anyway, they also have an oven and a microwave and a couch. Mmm I also miss my couch. It’s okay though. We’ll have a beautiful reunion in November.

A couple of the kids insisted on borrowing Amber’s and my sunglasses and then begged me to take a picture

Okay sorry, I got distracted. Like I was saying, it was nice to see what we’re working for at the farm every day. We got home just before dinner and then spent the night assembling school supply bundles for the kids at EP and Baptist. Avy raised money before she came to be used wherever she saw a need, and after seeing how many kids don’t have what they need to be successful at school, she started looking into getting some supplies for everyone. Each kid is going to get a notebook and a pencil case with a pencil, pen, eraser, sharpener, and ruler. They’ll still need more notebooks and the pencils won’t last all year, but it’s a start! It’s also good motivation for the kids because who doesn’t love new school supplies? We all helped put the pencil cases together, and they’ll be distributed to all of the kids later this week.

“First Day of School”

Posted on September 13, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

Happy first day of school! Today at the farm, we did something new! A few weeks ago, Nico brought up the point that it would be good for the eggplants if we trimmed off the leaves that are damaged or close to the ground or aren’t really capturing any sunlight. Apparently then the plant can put more energy into growing bigger eggplants rather than wasting it on growing leaves that aren’t contributing anything.

One of the eggplants after Nico attacked it with scissors

This morning, he showed Amber and me which leaves we should be cutting, and we went through one whole eggplant field. I’m just hoping I didn’t kill any of the plants… When in doubt, I left more leaves (and then Nico trailed behind me saying, “why did you leave this one? It’s worthless!” and cutting off all the additional ones he thought should go).

After breakfast, we headed over to EP, the primary school where we held summer school, to have a meeting with the principal and see the kids cleaning. The meeting was mostly just a formality. Joe introduced us to the principal, who we’d mostly already met because of summer school, and he welcomed us to the school. That’s basically it. Meanwhile, the kids were all sweeping and moving desks and getting the classrooms ready. Everyone went to their rooms from last year, and the principal went one classroom at a time to relocate the kids who were moving up a grade. It might seem like that’s weird and that all of the kids should just move, but there are quite a few who don’t advance each year for one reason or another.

A cool bug we found on one of the plants

To give you a better idea of the school situation here, there are three public primary schools in Frankadua (EP, Baptist, and Roman Catholic) and two public junior highs (Roman Catholic and I don’t know what the other one is called). We don’t work with Roman Catholic, so we’re just in the other two primary schools and junior high. There isn’t a senior high school in town. Any kids who go to high school have to travel to Juapong. I talked to one of the girls and she said she walks every day, it takes about two hours to get there, and you get caned if you’re late. It would be 1 GHC (a little more than 25 cents) each way to take a tro to school. Can you imagine having to wake up at 5AM to walk 2 hours to school, spend the whole day learning, walk 2 hours home, and do your homework before going to sleep and waking up the next day to do it all again?

There are a lot of things with the school system that blow my mind. At home, teachers usually have to go back at least a week early to get their rooms ready and have teacher meetings and such. Here, during the first week, the teachers may not have their classes assigned yet, the class schedules aren’t made, and most kids don’t show up because they know nothing is going on. At EP, they’re having the teacher meeting on Friday… during school… to finalize everything. So that means an entire week of school will have gone by, and all of the kids will be sitting in their classrooms with nothing to do on Friday during the meeting. Like what?

Monday at the Farm

Posted on September 12, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

It’s crazy how clear the absence of one person in a big group can be. I guess I didn’t realize before how much our personalities all balanced one another, but something about the group dynamic has felt kind of off since Fernanda left. Besides that, I’m personally in a bit of a mental funk right now and I know it, but I’m not sure what it’s going to take to get me out of it. Hopefully we just need a couple days for things to balance back out, and my mood will follow.

The bed where we planted the eggplant seeds. We loosened the dirt, made little trenches with our fingers, sprinkled seeds inside, and covered them with a thin layer of dirt. After that, they get covered with palm branches to hopefully discourage the chickens from eating all of the seeds.

Otherwise, the day was good! We planted eggplant seeds at the farm and checked on the tomato plants that we planted in the bed a couple weeks ago. From afar, it looked like the chickens ate all of the seeds and that everything left in the bed was a weed, but after checking things out more closely, we found some tomato plants!! The stupid chickens definitely ate most of them, but HA! Take that, chickens! You may have won the battle, but we’re going to win the war!

Amber pulling the weeds around the tomato plants.

Sorry… phew… deep breath. The chickens really get me all riled up. They’re vicious! One time, I accidentally injured a frog when we were hoeing, and when I looked back at it 5 seconds later, it was gone. I thought maybe it had hopped away until that same day we saw a gang of them work together to kill a big frog. Another one snatched a cricket out of the air, mid-jump. We’re always throwing sticks at them and threatening them with machetes and hoes, and they move just enough to not get hit and then chicken laugh at us. Yeah, I didn’t know that chickens could laugh either, but just trust me on this. You can see it on their smug little faces.

The rest of the day was chill because school doesn’t start until tomorrow. We spent some time digging the poop hole at the farm (a hole for the pig poop to be converted into fertilizer) and then played outside for the rest of the day. I also went back to the clinic to weigh myself again, and I haven’t lost any more weight! Well, that’s not completely true. It said I lost 2 more pounds, but I’m not worried about it like I was last time. That’s just 2 pounds in 2 weeks, unlike the 10 pounds in 2 weeks from before.

One of the plants from Nico’s seeds. It’s so big!

Tomorrow, real school starts, and I’m excited to see what it’s like! Apparently the first day is mostly cleaning and getting the school ready, but it will be interesting to see how it all works since my only school experience here has been summer school. Also, it looks like I’m going to be helping James with the PE classes, at least until another sports volunteer comes, because he said it’s hard to manage all of the kids, and generally the girls just don’t participate because the boys are ball hogs. Ha. Some things are the same no matter where you are. I said that I’m more than happy to help out and work with the girls. We’re going to have WAY more fun. Anyway, that won’t start until next week probably, so I have some time to mentally prepare. That’s good.

Another Sunday

Posted on September 11, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

Church today was awesome!! Amber and I went with Agnes, our cook. I don’t know if the one that we went to last week is atypical, but at this church, they had someone translating. We asked after the service if they usually say everything in Ewe and English, and they said, “if we have visitors”… so they just did it for us. It was so nice! Actually understanding some amount of what is happening makes a huge difference. Nico went to another church, and he said that when he got there, they asked for a volunteer from the congregation to sit with him and translate. I guess the one we went to last week really wasn’t the best place to start.

This service was more similar to what I’m used to at home. The whole thing was about an hour and a half. We started off by praying individually about a few different things. I prayed silently but everyone else was shouting theirs out which was pretty cool. I obviously didn’t understand any of it, but you could tell that they were praising God wholeheartedly. We moved into some singing which was all in Ewe, and Amber and I joined in with the clapping. Next, they asked any new people to stand up so that they could be welcomed… it was nice and awkward because it was just Amber and me… and there was some time to walk around and shake hands and greet one another. Then there was more singing, the sermon, singing and offering, and the end!

The church location was cool too because it was just a bunch of chairs outside under a tree, and there was a box of instruments that people could take to participate in the music. The whole atmosphere was really chill, and I felt comfortable there, unlike the last church where I felt out of place and lost the entire time.

Our backyard chickens hiding from the rain

The sermon was also exactly what I needed to hear. The pastor talked about how when things are going poorly in your life, it’s easy to remember and call on God and the people who support you through the hard times. Then, once things are going well, you forget about God and take those people for granted again. It’s completely true, and it was a good reminder for me right now.

After church, the rest of the day was mostly uneventful. We went to half of the soccer game until it started raining, and then we sat at home, ate cookies, and drank hot chocolate. Those are the best rainy day activities, in my opinion. If only I also had a couch, fuzzy blanket, and big screen tv…

Saturday Morning Adventure

Posted on September 10, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

We went on an adventure today! A couple weeks ago, we were walking to the farm, and Amber and I decided that we were going to climb one of the random mountains we could see in the distance. Since we stayed in Frankadua this weekend, today was the day! We asked the rest of the house if they wanted to join us, but the two of us were going to go either way. The group ended up being Amber, Nico, James, Avy, and me, plus one of James’s friends, Peter, and a kid, John, who James enlisted to help us get there. I’ll admit, I was a little annoyed at first that he didn’t trust us to make it on our own, but it ended up being helpful to have them there.

Our “mountain”. I’m not going to say that it was tall, but I promise you that it’s taller than it looks in this picture.

They let me lead the group to the mountain because I was determined for it to be an adventure and not just a boring hike where we followed blindly. I got us to the base of the mountain and let John take us from there. We went up the most ridiculous way… basically just ducking under tree branches and walking through tall grass and hoping for the best. I don’t think he had any idea where we were going, so he just kept walking uphill. We really should have brought a machete with us.

When we finally made it to the top, we found a farmer working on his field on top of the mountain. At that point, I was thinking, okay, there’s NO way that farmer comes up the mountain every day using the route we just took. Sure enough, there was a completely clear path from his farm to the base of the mountain. Perfect. At least we had a good way down!

We weren’t finished though because there was still no view. Nico was convinced that there was no view, so we should just turn around. The trees were too tall and they blocked everything. I was determined to prove him wrong (as if I had any control over it) and was planning to just keep walking until we saw something cool.

Luckily, the farmer was there to point us in the right direction, and we climbed up a little higher to get an awesome 200 degree view of the landscape. It was beautiful. I was so happy that there was actually something to see at the top, partly because it proved Nico wrong and partly because it made the trip so much better. It really could have gone either way since it’s not like we knew anything about the mountain when we picked it. We hung out and enjoyed the view for probably 45 minutes before doing the world’s easiest hike back down. Hooray for a successful adventure!

Dysfunctional attempt at a group picture

The rest of the day was nice and relaxing. I cleaned a little and napped and before I knew it, the whole day was gone. That seems to happen to me quite often. Where do the hours go? Anyway, time for bed. Relaxation and renewal weekend continues tomorrow!

Goodbye Fernanda :(

Posted on September 9, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

I’ve been doing a great job of mentally blocking out the fact that Fernanda is leaving, but today it finally reached the point where I couldn’t ignore the truth anymore. Her flight is late tonight, so she left here right after lunch. Being here feels like a time warp, so whenever something happens that makes it clear that time has passed, it’s a little jarring. When we got here, Fernanda still had a month left. Thinking about a month felt like a lifetime, but now here we are. I’ve been here for a month (!!!), and Fernanda’s two months are up. It really doesn’t feel like it’s been that long.

Front row – Avy, Fernanda, me Back row – Nico, Amber, James, Evans, Sosane

Saying goodbye to Maria was hard, but at least there were still five of us left. With Fernanda gone, all I can think about is how Nico, Amber, and Sosane are next. I know I shouldn’t focus on that, but right now, it’s hard to push it out of my mind.

Before lunch, Fernanda and I did one last lap around the town so she could say goodbye to some people and we could have a little time together. Then we ate, took a farewell picture in front of the house, and she started give out goodbye hugs. I was determined to hold it together, but let’s be real… I obviously cried, went into the house to pull myself together, and cried again as she was getting on the tro. And then that was it. She was gone, we walked back to the house, and I convinced myself that she was probably coming back in a day or so.

Everyone being sad that Fernanda is leaving, except Sosane who apparently missed the sad face picture memo

The rest of the day (after I stopped crying… come on, pull it together, Lara!) was just spent around the house until about 4:30 when we went to keep working on our poop hole (a hole for the pig poop to be stored and converted into fertilizer). We were there for probably 45 minutes before Avy showed up with a whole pack of kids and three volunteers from Gold in tow (they’re visiting the waterfalls this weekend and are staying at our house). Apparently the kids led the group to the farm (why the kids know how to get there is beyond me), and as soon as everyone showed up, our productivity went to about zero. One of the kids did help us out a lot by using a machete to chop up a root that was blocking our way. He originally gave the machete to me, but after I did about three hits, he shook his head, took it from me, and completely destroyed the root in about 10 seconds. The kids here really know how to use their farm tools.

We stuck around the farm for maybe 20 more minutes before the group made its way back to our house for dinner. Afterwards, we sat around and talked until bedtime. Fun fact – the girl from Gold went to my high school. Small world, right? We graduated 7 years apart, so we don’t know any of the same people, but it’s still pretty cool. Sometimes it’s nice to be able to talk about something familiar when you’re so used to everything being new and different.

Goodbye Summer School

Posted on September 8, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

Our class, pretending for 5 seconds that they’re well behaved

Happy last day of summer school!! Nico and I were excited for school today because we had games planned in every class. In English, we had a spelling bee and played hangman. In Math, we split the class in two and did a math problem competition where each team sent one person up to the board and they had to race to solve a multiplication problem. The elective was the same as yesterday, the balloon game, because the kids liked it so much.

There must have been something bad in the air today because our class was behaving horribly. We had 9 kids, and some of them had never been to summer school before. That was most of the problem because those kids were misbehaving, and as soon as one kid starts, it’s so hard to control the rest. In hindsight, there was one kid who I should have just sent home, but I was so determined to have a good last day that I couldn’t do it.

One of the kids solving a problem from the review of yesterday’s test

I was also really struggling with patience today, so instead of being able to work through disciplining the kids, I just shut down once I started getting annoyed. I know that’s not good, but it’s the end of the week and I’m thinking that this weekend will be a good time to reset and recover. In normal life, a teacher gets to go home and have some time away from their students. In our case, we come home and we STILL have to deal with the kids. They play outside our house and come on the porch even though they KNOW they aren’t supposed to. So you go to school and have to reprimand the kids who are breaking the rules, and then you get home and have to reprimand more kids who are breaking the rules. There’s no time to reset your patience.

Our afternoon activity consisted of making chalk outlines of the volunteers on our porch. This is what happens when the power goes out and it’s too hot to be inside without fans. It started because, as you can see, Amber is napping outside to avoid the heat and looked pretty unresponsive, so we decided to have some fun with it.

Sometimes you just want to do something without having kids around, but they’re EVERYWHERE. I go for a run and they run with me. I stretch and they stretch with me. I sit on the porch, trying to relax, and they can’t just leave me alone. We go to watch the soccer games and they’re always trying to sit on your lap or braid your hair or ask you questions. This is probably similar to what it’s like to have children, except when that happens, it’s your choice and you’re theoretically somewhat prepared for it. In this case, I don’t have my own children, and I certainly don’t want them right now, so I think that means I should be able to get some peace and quiet every once in a while.

Nico retrieving Amber’s boot from the poop

Okay, so after re-reading what I just wrote, I think I need a vacation. I definitely need some kid-free time to mentally recover because I’m not in the best place right now to be able to help the kids. Mostly I’m in a good place for being annoyed at them.
In other news, I had the chance to get some of my frustration out this afternoon because Nico, Amber, and I went to the farm to get started on the poop pit/fertilizer hole (and Fernanda and Avy came along just for fun).

There’s nothing like a little manual labor to take your mind off things. We decided to put the hole in the same place where they’re currently putting the pig poop, but that meant that we needed to dig through a layer of poop before getting to dirt. Amber was digging for about 5 seconds before her boots sank completely into the poop. Gross. By the time we left, all of the poop was out of the hole, but we still have a long way to go. At least the dirt doesn’t smell so bad.

The walk home ended up being my favorite part of the day. We were listening to music while digging the hole, so we just left it playing for the walk home and ended up basically dancing our way back. We have to go past a bunch of houses, and when we were almost home, a woman came outside (she was probably about 70 years old) and started dancing with us. The whole thing was so spontaneous and we were all acting like total goons. It was awesome. That energy extended into Fernanda’s goodbye bonfire, and we had a good end to what started out as a poopy day.

Test Day

Posted on September 7, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

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.

Pancake with groundnut butter, sugar, and Milo

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.

Reunion in P3/P4!

Posted on September 6, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

We had a new task at the farm today! It’s always exciting when we get to do something different, and this time it was putting fertilizer around the eggplants. John showed us how they usually do it, by digging a hole about a finger length from the plant and putting some fertilizer in. Nico immediately disapproved. He said that there are two problems with doing it that way. First, if none of the roots are under the hole you dig, all of the fertilizer is just wasted. Second, if some of the roots ARE under the hole, the fertilizer might be too much for them and they’ll burn. So either way, it’s really not the best thing for the plant. Nico told us to dig more of a U-shaped trench around the stem and put the fertilizer in there. He still wasn’t completely happy with that solution, and we decided that we needed to have a farm meeting later to talk about what to do in the future.

School was also exciting because Nico and I were reunited! Isabel and Sosane took over P2 for me, and I got to move back up to P3/P4! I was happy to be back, but at the same time, I was in the groove of teaching P2. It’s hard to adjust between teaching the different levels because you have to re-learn where the kids are skill-wise and adjust your thinking.
I read the kids a story in English class, and we asked them questions about it to work on reading comprehension. The story was taken from one of their textbooks, but honestly, the writing in the books is so bad that I don’t know how the kids are supposed to learn how to write properly. I read it out loud and modified it as I went so that it would make sense. Besides the numerous grammatical issues, some parts were so unclear that I didn’t understand what they were even trying to say. I wish I could just go through the book with a red pen and correct everything.

Our corn is growing! You can see the rows of little corn plants

The afternoon was spent doing laundry. I think that #1 on my list of things I miss from home is a washing machine. The list really isn’t that long, but laundry definitely makes the cut (also, seat belts, clean fingernails, flush toilets, and recycling). It probably took me 2-3 hours, and I can’t confidently say that any of my clothes are any cleaner than they were when I started. Hooray!
We had our farm meeting after dinner, and Nico presented his case against the single hole fertilizer technique. Joe (the guy in charge of the farm and logistics at the volunteer house) and John agreed to let us use Nico’s U technique instead. Nico also wanted to talk about a new way to use the pig poop (he’s an agricultural engineer, so unlike me he knows something about plants). They’re currently gathering it and using it somewhat, but he wants to dig a new hole for it (aka a new poop pit) and said that theyneed to mix in dry and wet leaves to make it a really good natural fertilizer for the farm. Apparently the soil is already good here, so he thinks that between that and the pig poop mixture, they won’t need to buy fertilizer anymore. They agreed to give it a try which is exciting but also means that we now have to dig a 3m x 3m x 1.5m hole. Things to look forward to! We’ll start Thursday afternoon probably.

Tonight we’re going to a birthday bonfire for one of the guys on the soccer team. It seems like every celebration here involves a bonfire… That’s great and all, but I wish that every bonfire also came with s’mores because seriously, how much better would that be? I should start bringing supplies with me so that when everyone else is drinking their beers, I can be chowing down on toasted marshmallows. Yummm.

Last Week of Summer School!

Posted on September 5, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

What’s the best way to spend a Monday morning? Shucking, that’s how! I’m actually getting to the point where I don’t hate it as much as I used to. Definitely still not my favorite task, but I think I would choose it over hoeing now. I’m immune to the grossness of the worms and worm eggs and just steer clear of anything that looks like it might contain an ant farm. Someone else can deal with that.

School went so well! Sosane and Isabel were just observing classes today, and they’re going to take P2 over from me tomorrow. It’s always interesting when an outsider comes in and you get the chance to see things through their eyes. Sosane said something about how I did a good job of managing the classroom, and my reaction was, “huh?” But then I started thinking, and while I wouldn’t say I’m GOOD at managing the kids, I’m definitely way better than I used to be. That was a cool realization, and I’m encouraged by it. I can do this, and one day, I might even feel like I know what I’m doing!

In English, I read a story, and we talked about the animals in it. We’ve been talking about animals for the entire last week since I started with P2, and the kids have actually learned something! It’s so cool when I ask them a question that I know they didn’t used to know the answer to, and now they do because we talked about it. Like I taught them about flamingos last week, and now they know what they look like, that they’re birds, and that birds have wings and feathers. I taught them something!

We had a sort of English/Math overlap after story time because we did a dictation (aka spelling test), and it was all numbers. On Friday, we worked on writing numbers in word form and vice versa, but I realized that they didn’t even know how to spell all of the numbers. The plan for today was to work on the spelling first and then do the exact same thing as Friday because they definitely need to keep practicing.

I really want the kids to at least know the things that are important for life in general, even if they don’t stay in school for much longer or go to college. In math, I think that two of those things are times tables and DEFINITELY knowing how to say numbers. For example, Avy went out to the market recently to check the price on something, and when she asked, the shopkeeper said that it was “two hundred fifty”. She was taken aback because that’s WAY more expensive than the thing should have been. She asked at another shop, and the person said “two hundred” and then showed her a 20. Soo… not two hundred. Twenty. Big difference. When she went back to the first shop and asked to see the bills, the woman showed her a 20 and a 5. Twenty five.

Based on that story, I didn’t feel bad spending another whole class on how to say numbers. It seemed like they were getting the hang of things by the end, so hopefully if any of them ever work in a shop, they can tell the difference between 20 and 200.

Two of my kids with the body part lesson. Yes, I’m an artistic genius.

For the elective, we talked about body parts. That’s another thing we’ve been working on where I’ve been able to see that they’re actually learning. It’s seriously so cool teaching them something new one day and hearing them repeat it back to you the next.

After school, I spent the rest of the day playing outside. James (one of the new volunteers) and I did a workout together and then he and Nico tried to teach me how to play rugby (it did not go well). Really, I want to get better at soccer while I’m here because currently I’m horrible. Maybe I’ll add acquiring some soccer and rugby skills to my list of goals (other goals: learn Ewe and how to carry things on my head).

James is responsible for making both of the sports goals happen, so good luck to him… I’ll keep you updated. So far, the Ewe is going okay, I haven’t carried anything on my head, and I’m not optimistic about rugby or soccer. Plenty of room for improvement!