Tuesday

This morning in English I had created a PowerPoint on emotions that I went through with the ladies. It was difficult finding the word for each emotion in Chichewa and it was hard describing what an emotion is. For example excited is quite similar to happy, so I don’t know if they even differentiate those two in Chichewa. Either way, I thought it was a quick thing we could do to break up what we usually do. I only had 4 ladies come today so I think that’s the smallest group I’ve had so far. After emotions we talked about the verbs “am, is, are, was, were, will be” and I showed them some examples of how those are used in sentences. I know this is a very complicated thing but this was one of the questions they had the other day, so I figured I’d at least expose them to it. I’m not sure if we’ll go into a whole lot more depth than that.

To finish up the day we ended with some word unscrambling activity and Bananagrams to work on spelling.

Raph and Sam were there waiting for me when I got back. They did such a great job with their worksheets and letter flashcards today! I feel like they’re really making some improvements. We also did a fun math thing with addition. They picked a math flashcard each, without looking what it was, and then we added it together. They enjoyed it being turned into a little game.

Preschool actually went pretty well today. We began our day together doing the chants they usually do with Charity, and then I took my young ones to the other room. Today I tried having them sit on the floor instead of desks and it worked alright. We sang a lot of songs and did some coloring. I even brought out my sock puppet chicken I had made for student teaching. They loved that thing and were giggling like crazy! As some of the older kids finished with their booklets, Erika sent them to me, so before long I had a whole crew of kids singing songs. I love that they know a lot of them now and even request them! Their favorite is still Ram Sam Sam and the runner up is Sticky Bubble Gum.

Then we headed outside and did some more songs and finger plays and then had free play ‘til the end.

After preschool I had Chipo and Mwandida. They too did a great job today. I feel like the kids are getting more used to me and the routine and since we do a lot of the same things each time they are really starting to catch on. We were out on the mat today in the shade and it’s kind of nice because we can see more what’s going on around campus. It also attracts a few stray kids who happen to be walking by, so sometimes we have friends join us. Today Dalitso came for a few minutes. Since the girls came a little early I let them leave early as well and then I headed over for volleyball.

At first no one was showing up, but then we got a good turnout. Enough to even make 3 teams. Our team was the reigning champs; we won 4 games in a row, 5 total. My fellow teammates were Dee, Hastings, Phoebe, Parksen, and Titus. It was loads of fun (always more fun when you win J).

Anne was a very busy lady today. She has lots of prep work to do for the big CELC conference that’s going to be here in a couple weeks. So she was very apologetic that she didn’t have a big supper prepared for us. We were totally OK with that; we see how hard she works and most of the time we feel like we should be doing more to help her. We insist that she puts us to work in a couple weeks for the conference. For supper we had grilled cheese, tomato and onion sandwiches as well as some cooked pieces of chicken and beef. Even though it wasn’t one of her huge dinners it was still very delicious and filling.

The rest of the night I did a bit of planning and thinking through lessons for tomorrow, read my book and battled with the TV to try to find a good station to watch. Unfortunately the TV won. The only shows that play are religious stations or the TV guide. We also figured out how to get the radio to play on the TV and really weren’t a whole lot more successful at that. Oh well.