I've moved to my permanent placement for work- it's a small school for mentally and physically disabled children whose parents need help taking care of them during the work day. I'm in a class room of 17 kids, ranging in ages from 5 to 16 all with varying challenges. The kids are great, so enthusiastic and willing to try anything. My biggest problem is not the different capacities of each kid, but the language barrier. Everything has to be "show" there's no "tell" in my classroom because they just stare with blank faces. Most of the kids speak xhosa (I don't know how to tell you how to pronounce this phonetically because the xh is pronounced with a specific "click"). We take language lessons, but its only an hour once a week, so I can only say veeerrry few phrases. Molo Sisi!!!! Is greeting for girls, they all giggle when I say that to them. This past weekend was a big internationa kite flying festival downtown that benefited my school. A day before the festival several of the people came to a local park and demonstrated the kites for the kids.
they were in heaven, it was so much fun. THey each got a mini kite of there own and had a ball.
she loves to pose for the camera, I have about 15 similar pics to this one.
Another difficulty with my school is that it isn't even a school as we know it. It is completely community based and ran as a non profit. So there are no trained teachers, or resources, we depend on the mothers in the community and donations such as the kite festival to help the kids. My classroom is small, but we have a few tables and enough chairs for everyone. I've bought crayons and paper and a few other small puzzles for the kids to play with. In the mean time I've begun to evaluate the kids on an individual basis to determine the best course of action for their education. I never thought I would have the opportunity to do so, and I'm certainly not sure if I'm the best person to be doing this- but honestly, I'm the only one who wants to. I truly believe these kids can be taught and I want to give them the best life possible. The smallest change in this school can make a huge impact on their lives. I want to give the program something that will last once I'm gone, something that can help them reach more kids than just my 17.
On a lighter note,
I swam with great white sharks.
pause for my Mom to catch her breath...
It was the most exciting and exhilarating thing I've ever done. We drove about 3 hours down to the word capital of great white sharks, took a short boat ride out, them started throwing fish over board and waited for the fins to appear. Then, we got in wet suits and jumped in a big cage and waited. It was amazing. There were about 4 around our boat including a baby shark. It was cute, I guess for a shark. The biggest one was about 9 feet long. I'm waiting for my underwater camera to get developed. Then we went out further and went looking for whales. We found a mother and her calf and got sooo close, they swam right under our boat. i bought the dvd of our dive, so we'll have to have a big party when I get home and we can catch my freak out together.
I've been spending a lot of time with my roommates, bonding and taking in all the sights of the city. We went to a local open air market and haggled with all the vendors. I've been buying tons of presents for everyone at one...speaking of presents...
My birthday is this weekend!!!! the big 2-3. We're having a bbq in our backyard then walking downtown to the rugby stadium for a sod out semi final game. I'm going to buy a jersey tomorrow, we're painting faces and definitely going to have a good time. everyone here is really nice, I love getting the chance to meet and become friends with people from all over, so I'm in heaven right now. There's about 26 of in the house right now, and we're getting 4 more next week putting us at full capacity. I share a bathroom with 6 other people right now, so I can't imagine adding anyone else to that line.
Not only does turning 23 make me feel old, but it's 9.30 pm and I can barely keep my eyes open. On that note, goodnight, I'll post more soon (for real this time).
imub.
