Tuesday 5-20-14
Today
was the start of the kids chore list and trying to get through the morning
without me guiding them the whole way through. They were both very excited
about it, but it didn’t take long for Jove to lose the “no whining all day
long for 500 tsh” He had one little problem about finding his uniform in the
morning, but after that he was great. He was looking forward to getting home
from school so he could clean up the yard. They keep talking about all of the
half cake and candy they can buy with the money they will earn. I will have to
make a small portable list to keep with me, that way I can mark down if they
whine in school or back talk or have an issue resulting in complaining about
lunch. I am very excited about this and very hopeful that it will mean me
yelling less. As I told the kids the other day “I miss my happy voice. My happy
voice is so much nicer than my angry voice”.
Mamaliz
and I got to school and the kids were both great. Jove didn’t even need a
tissue when I went in his room to say hi. He usually breaks down into tears at
this point, but he didn’t. So I made a deal with him, so long as he was great
all the rest of the day, this one day, we could pretend that moment of whining
this morning didn’t happen. He was so happy. During Std.1 I took a few of the
kids that were having a harder time with borrowing and carrying, and I worked
with them at the back of the classroom whilst Teacher Liz worked with the rest
of the class on basically solving for x. 28+ __ = 57 and other problems such as
these. The kids I worked with slowly but surely were doing better as time went
by and even at the start they were doing better than they had the day before. I
think they just need lots and lots of practice and soon they will get it and be
just fine. We finished with the math and went on to English. We had finished the
book a week prior, so we found a small book that had a few copies and had them
read in that. All went well, although by the 20th time having to
explain that the word ‘piggy’ is not ‘pig’ you have to pronounce the ending ‘y’
as an ‘ee’ sound. They have this issue with pretty much all words that end in
y. Which is funny because in Swahili everything pretty much ends in a vowel and
even if it doesn’t they pronounce a vowel sound at the end. Frank becomes
Frankie, Liz becomes Lizzy, etc. Std1 had done such a good job and accomplished
so much that I read them a story. It was very cute, about a hippo that had a
tooth ache and all the other animals kept spreading rumors about what was going
on when all hippo was actually doing was moaning from the pain and bumped into
a tree. By the end the rumors had hippo destroying the whole jungle and damming
up the river with all the broken trees, etc. The kids had a lot of fun with it
because I like to read with a lot of enthusiasm in my voice.
We went
into Std.3 and worked on math today. We did our flash cards and then finished
our book. Most of the kids were even getting the concept of paragraph,
sentence, word when I would ask the questions such as “What is the last word in
the second sentence in the first paragraph.” Mamaliz was checking some of the
kids old homework for other classes, which she does occasionally because you
never know what you will find. She found this spot that were questions about a
small story in their science book. The teacher had them write the sentences
then answer. She then corrected the. The problem with this is that St. Mary’s
is an English medium school, and these sentences were all wrong. Wrong grammar,
misspelled words, and worst of all, in the book there were questions that made
no sense at all. At the end of the day, Mamaliz had to talk to the teachers and
basically tell them that if their English was so bad that they could not
properly correct the English portion of the science homework then they need to
learn more or we might need to find new teachers.
I
walked into Std.1 to get some flashcards to work with std3 and one of the
teachers asked me about Ayla’s tooth. She was very concerned that I had not
pulled it out, because the new tooth was coming in and the two teeth would get
stuck together. She was actually serious, I could not believe it. I had to
spend a few minutes and explain to her that when the adult tooth comes in it
will force the baby tooth out. I had to do this a few times because she did not
seem to want to believe me. Ah, Africa. We ended std3 time by my teaching them
more on long division and showing them there is really no difference in difficulty
in dividing 3 into 57 than 2 into 4827495. I gave them a four question quiz
with a few multiplication and a few division and one of the division was
something like 3 into a number in the thousands. All they could say was they
could not do it because it was too hard. I was pleased to see that after I
showed them, they all seemed to understand at least a little. Another thing to
continue to work on.
Home
for lunch, and the kids did great saying goodbye and that they would see me
after lunchtime. Again, I was proud. I know they are doing it only to earn
money, but at this point I don’t care, they are being good. Our fridge is again
not working, so I knew we needed to use up our veggies otherwise they would go
bad soon. So I had a nice salad of raw beets, cucumber, and carrots. I even
made a salad dressing with lots of vinegar (balsamic and apple cider), mustard,
garlic powder, olive oil and sesame oil, and peanut butter. It was a very good
salad. I have been on a massive veggie kick. The rest of lunch break I read my
book and just relaxed. That is pretty much my only time for me to relax until
it is bedtime.
We went
back to school and on into Std2. I took two kids that are having a hard time
reading and we read the “bob books” Bob books are books for very early readers,
for those of you that remember, they are like “dick and jane”. The kids had a
good time reading one on one like that and were excited to hear we would be
doing it again the next day.
We all
headed home, and Jove had gone on ahead of me with his buddy Leonard. The two
of them walked all the way home on their own. Jove is really getting this
independent thing. Ayla on the other hand was right there on my heels while I
waited for Mamaliz in case she needed the keys to lock up the school. Once we
got home, I started up making peanut butter cookies. The oven is tricky because
there is no temp gauge or thermometer inside, but I managed to get it to work,
and we ended up with three dozen very tasty cookies. I brought four over to Dr.
Chris and Hannah. They had a rough day today. Hannah was telling us as we
walked back to school from lunch break that he was at the hospital trying his
best to resuscitate two babies at the same time by himself with only one oxygen
bag and no way to make sure they are okay after coming back. There is no ICU
here. I figured after a day like that they could use some cookies. Later in the
day they brought back the plate and even had a small dinosaur coloring book for
Ayla and Jove as a way of saying thank you. The kids were very pleased and
colored them quite a few pictures that they are saving to give them tomorrow.
As a
way to use up more veggies, I made a veggie soup and it turned out pretty good.
The kids only had one bowl, but I believe that was because they knew they would
get a cookie for desert. Bedtime went smoothly because they wanted to earn
their 500 tsh for no whining all day. Man do I love this new chore list. All
in all, each kid earned 900 tsh for a great day of behavior and cleaning. I got
to use my happy voice today and I am so happy because of that.
It
turns out my dad even got a Facebook page so that we can talk easier while I am
here. For one reason or another, the internet will not work almost ever, but
even with the internet isn’t working, I can still get Facebook messenger to
work. So now I can talk to my dad on a more regular basis. I can easily say
that I have had a great day and was able to get a ton of stuff accomplished which
just made it that much better. Now all that is left to do is relax a little
before bed. I think I can do that.
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