A Day in the Life (Part One)

-Wake up!!! (Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays 5:00 a.m., other days about 5:45)

-Boil water for shower/breakfast.

-Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays (if it’s not raining) I run with Laura, about 3 miles in the dark.  Other people are out running at this time, too, though so it is pretty safe.

-6:00-6:45- Shower, eat, get ready for school.

*A note on the bucket shower:  I say this only because it confused me...  This may have been very clear to everyone else.  I thought a bucket shower entailed some sort of rigging system where there is a hole or many holes in the bottom of a bucket that you hoist over your head.  Wrong.  It’s a bucket with water in it.  You use some small container to pour the water over yourself.  Duh?  I think my imagination got the best of me. 

-6:45-7:00 Walk to the bus.  We walk by a primary school on the way, and the kids love to practice their English “good morning’s” on us.

-7:30 arrive at school, wander about, greet kids and teachers.

-7:50 “Parade”  This is kind of an assembly where the kids stand in lines and respond to commands such as “attention!” “at ease,” “about turn,” etc.  This is usually followed by the national anthem (I almost have it down), maybe a song in English, and morning prayer.  Then the kids march off to class (singing “marching, marching, marching like a soldier…” they love it?).  At first I found this very odd, but now it is one of my favorite parts of the day!

-8:00-12:20- Classes.  This is the time when I rotate between the four “English Medium” classes.  Lately I’ve started to go to only two classes per day to try to develop some continuity in the classroom and have time to do something a little more meaningful.  Every day is different and I’m still not quite sure what I should be doing, but I’m trying.

Typical classroom activities include singing songs (If you’re happy and you know it, 5 little monkeys- Molly they LOVE this one!!! Thanks!, twinkle twinkle, etc), writing the alphabet and numbers etc.  I also do a lot of grading, which mostly involves checking if things are written correctly, e.g. is that capital letter Q acceptable?  I’m pretty much a hard ass.  The first grade kids do a lot of copying from the blackboard.  For a lot of them, I’m pretty sure school is just a drawing activity.  I’m trying to figure out ways to get them to actually understand what they are doing.  Suggestions in all areas here are MORE than welcome! 

Honestly, school is really, really hard for me.  I’m going to go into more depth in another post to try to explain it. 

This is getting long so I will continue with the PM hours another day!  And by they way, to tell time here, subtract 6 hours… For example, 12:00 p.m.  is really 6:00 (or saa sita in Swahili).  7:00 a.m. is 1:00 (saa moja asubuhi... the first hour of daylight).  It definitely makes sense if you think about it because the days here are pretty much always the same length, but needless to say it is a little confusing to ask someone the time. 

xoxoHB