Week Four

Week four of teaching has flown by! It is amazing how every week goes faster and faster. As I was leaving class today I was having my students repeat "see you tomorrow." About a minute after I walked out I realized today is Friday so I wont actually see them tomorrow! I hope I didn't confuse their English too much!! I recieved some good news this week as well. I was accepted to Teach For America, so I will be teaching middle school language arts in St. Louis next fall! I am very excited about this oppurtunity and everyday with my kids in Africa gives me more passion for teaching.
This week my third graders have been working on the difference between present tense and past tense. Its very hard to teach, I'm not sure how much they understand yet, but we are going to continue working it with it next week. I've done so many concepts with this class I think I am going to prepare a test of some sort for Monday just to see what has stuck and what I still need to return to and review while I'm still here. There are no tests or reviewing in Tanzanian schools so I think the kids are going to super confused when they see questions from two or three weeks ago in front of them, but I hope it will ultimately help me more effectively teach them.
I've been doing some vocab with the fourth graders, which is so much fun! Most of our words are verbs so the kids have a great time acting everything out. I gave them a word search with their vocab words in it, and I was very nervous about how it would go over, but they loved it! They want more of it, so I think I'm going to start making word searches for both my classes.
Today at recess the kids taught me a really fun Tanzanian game. We stood in a circle and skipped around trying to keep a ball in their air. The kids had a song that went with the game, I wish I knew what the words to it meant!!

The best part of the week was my visit to Kili Kids Orphanage. There is a child at the orphange that I have formed a special bond with named Parsley. He is 18 months old, but looks more like six month old because he is HIV positive. He is very developmentally behind where he should be, he can not walk or talk yet. But he loves to laugh and mimick noises like "woohooo"
Every time I go I hold him up by his hands and try and get him to walk, he is getting so close! In fact last week he took about half a step on his own. Watching him do this was one of the happiest split seconds I've ever experienced. I visited the orphanage on Tuesday, and he was not up to trying to walk because he had some sort of ear infection. But I really hope to see him toddling around the yard at the orphange before I leave!

Here are some pictures of Parsley and another boy who makes me heart melt, Andre who is 2.
Me and Parsley, isnt he adorable?My friend Joe holding Andre while he kicks everybody else! I love this picture though because you can see Parsley's floral print pants, he is so cute with his flowery ensemble.Andre reading a book upside down =)

Parelsey LOVES to stick his head through anything it will fit through.