Hot Tuesday

It was hard to sleep very well last night. It’s a lot noisier in this house because we can hear more traffic and there are lots of neighborhood dogs that decided to bark most of the night. I still got a decent night’s sleep…my new bed is quite comfortable!

This morning I had to be a lot more organized and bring everything over for English and tutoring right away. I didn’t forget anything. The backpack was very heavy though.

English went well. Today we learned church vocabulary words like pulpit, altar, choir, pastor, pew etc. I thought it would be fairly easy but it was still quite a challenge. I showed them the PowerPoint I made with pictures and definitions of each word and then they rewrote the words and I tried giving them easier definitions. Then I quizzed them by describing an item and they had to tell me what it was. Even though they could read off their notes this was still difficult. I think it was harder because I wasn’t giving them a word for word description of what they had written down. So they still had to think pretty hard for the answer.

After learning this new vocabulary we played a little dictation game. They split into two teams of 2 and one person was the writer and one person the helper. I read them a 7 sentence paragraph, one sentence at a time, repeating it twice. They had to write down what I said and the helper would help them remember what I said and help with spelling and punctuation. Whichever team had the least mistakes at the end after I corrected them was the winner. I enjoyed this activity and I think they did too. I used words that we had learned before so I think it was a manageable level of difficulty yet still challenging. I think it’s a great way to practice English too. They have to listen very carefully to what I said and then translate that to the written word. It also makes them think hard about spelling and punctuation.

We finished the day with Bananagrams.

After English we headed right back to our old house for tutoring. We had a little bit of time in between to read and wait for the kids to arrive. Both my tutees were rather late today. Raph got there first about half an hour late and then Sam came about 45 minutes late. It was OK though, we still got stuff done. I think it’s more difficult for them to remember now that they are on holiday from school. It was so hot today during tutoring. After having quite a dip in the temperatures lately it’s been really hot again the last couple of days. Back in the 80s. We’ve also had a few showers of rain which is quite uncommon for this time. Usually by April the rains are pretty much over.

After tutoring we headed back for lunch. I have been getting really sick of eating PB&Js every day for lunch so I boycotted them today. I was just going to have yogurt and an apple but then I decided to try one of the avocadoes we got from a tree on campus last week. It was actually really good! I thought it still wouldn’t be ripe enough but it was. So we are excited because the trees on campus are full of them. Now we can pick some whenever we want and just let them ripen for a few days before eating them. That will definitely beat the peanut butter sandwiches every day.

Around 1 we headed over for preschool. Today Bridgette was there so that was nice to have her translate for us. We did our usual chants in the beginning and then instead of splitting up today, we stayed together as a whole group. I brought some foam sticky letters along with me, so I gave each kid a handful and we stuck them to construction paper. You should have seen how excited and quiet they were while they worked on this! For the older kids like Paul, we had them identify what letters they were but for the younger kids they just loved the stickiness of the letters and working on those fine motor skills by peeling of the paper on the back. They loved making little patterns with the foam letters. After this we did some songs and finger plays and then had free play. It was a pretty good afternoon!

Afternoon tutoring was Chipo and Mwandida. We did more work with flashcards and spelling basic words and then did some subtraction and addition with the stones again. These girls are a hoot. They try so hard and they’re spunky. They definitely let me know if something is too hard or if they enjoy doing something. The TV was on in the other guest house so occasionally throughout the tutoring session Mwandida would just get up and stand on the grass within view of the TV and just watch for a couple seconds. It was quite funny. And then Chipo would yell at her to come back and kalipansi (sit down!)

The day finished off with playing volleyball. There was a nice group playing today. I made friends with a new young man named Benjamin. I’m not sure who he is or where he is from but as I started talking to him he gestured to me that he was deaf. So throughout out the game we would just have silent communication and gesturing and smiles. He is such a sweet guy so I will have to find out more about who he is.

We hung around campus after volleyball for supper. This week is the last week Anne is cooking for us for a while since she’ll be so busy next week with conference. So we are savoring our last few nights of Anne’s delicious dinners.

By the time we got home it was dark out. I had some more planning to do for tomorrow. We also have details to figure out for a trip we want to take to Luangwa soon. We’re trying to figure out transportation to get there, and how it would coordinate with class schedules and what days we’d have to give off. We also have the in-service training coming up this weekend so we have details to figure out for that as well. Tonight was one of those nights I had to sit down and write a detailed list of things that need to get done.