Wednesday, January 21, 2009
I cant believe that I’ve already been here a week and a half. Time is already flying by! How is everything at home? I heard that the weather warmed up a bit this week but that it was supposed to go back down. That really doesn’t surprise me, knowing
Today was another day back at it. We woke up early again and went to mass. It’s usually dark until around 7:30 here, so we’re always up before the sun rises. I find it so weird because at home in the summer time the sun rises early and sets late but here it rises and sets at the same time every day. Because it’s warm here, I have a hard time thinking that it should be dark when I get out of bed so some days I almost expect there to be snow on the ground when I walk outside.
It was another normal school day here and I’m starting to get to know the routine of things now. In the school, the students stay in their classrooms but the teachers only teach one or two subjects so they move around instead of picking up and moving a whole classroom. I’ve gotten to know all the teachers names now. There is Anna – who teaches verbal and English, Sang – who is the teacher in the classroom that I am in, he teaches quantitative and grammar. Paul teaches the older classes so I’m not sure what he teaches because I don’t get to teach with him. Emmanuel teaches art and phonics and Armondo teaches integrated studies and math. There is also a French teacher but I don’t remember his name. My favorite to teach with is Armondo. The sisters all say that he was born to be a teacher and I completely agree. He keeps the students attention during class and he has fun with them when they’re learning something new but he knows how to keep them in line. I appreciate that since the class can sometimes get out of hand. Today I had to laugh because, like I said the first grade class that I help in is a bit misbehaved and so Armondo had to give them a lecture. He says, “Why do you all act like monkeys?! Why do you act like animals? Do you know what an animal is?” And they all put up their hands like “oo! Oo! I know I know!” We were both laughing because they obviously were just thinking of the answer instead of thinking that they were all acting like little animals.
After school, the girls from the hostel all wanted to go and do some “exercising” as they call it and they wanted me to go with them. One of the first days I was here Sr. Josaphine and Sr. Bernadette were outside doing some exercises and so I brought out my skipping rope for them to use. After they were done using it they wanted to see me skip so I did and all the girls from the hostel were so intrigued at how I could skip. So they had been asking me to go and run with them. So today a few of us when. Catherine, she’s one of my favorite out of the girls, said “Jennifer we’re going to race. I want to see if you can beat me.” I said, well sure why not. So I got my running shoes, shorts and a t-shirt on and I came out side to see these women – who had gotten ready to run themselves wearing shorts and a tank top with sandals. Sandals?! When they saw my shoes, they all began to marvel at them. I was so surprised to see that all of them were going to wear sandals to run. Everyone at home has shoes to run in, even if they’re not the best quality. I just couldn’t believe it and in some way, I felt bad having my own pair of shoes. So Catherine and I lined up by the side of the house to race and everyone was watching. I was just laughing because I thought, “ I wonder what this is going to be like.” I wasn’t sure who was going to win and all of a sudden there were 2 or 3 girls racing me! After the race was done all of the girls were yelling, “she can run, she can run!” I thought it was so funny. So we all went out across the highway to an old field where there were some boys playing football. The girls all wanted to run around the field a couple times so we did. While we were running it dawned on me that I was really here and that I need to take all of this in. It was around 4:00pm when we left so it was still hot out and when we reached the field I was overcome by what I had always thought the scenery of
The sisters were wanting pancakes so they thought that I would like to make them and since Sr. Catherine was on supper duty for the week, we did it together. Well, she had never made American pancakes before, so she watched and I made them. It was really funny because they thought it was something so special and I thought “oh wow…this is the easiest thing to make.” We usually only made pancakes at home when there was nothing else to make. Everyone seemed to enjoy them. And I enjoyed them too since it was the only thing I had eaten for the past week and a half that reminded me of home.
We had been talking tonight about how Sr. Odile was going to buy a few more volleyballs because we needed to have a few since we have so many girls and boys that want to play. The amazing thing is that I got online to check my email and I had an email from my friends Wendy and Josh saying how they read about how we only had one ball for 100 girls and they wanted to help. So Josh is going to buy us 6 more balls and a pump to use! When I told Sr. Odile, she was so excited, as was I. Thank you Lord for his generosity! The kids really need it! So Thank you Josh!
I hope all is well! Please continue to pray!
In Jesus and Mary,
Jen
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