EXHAUSTED

The last two days have absolutely tired us out!

We came home on Sunday and I went off to find what the kids were up to. I was dragged upstairs to where all the kids were dancing and pulled right into it told 'I HAD to dance!' They all had a good laugh at me as I attempted some of their dance moves!

We got woken up at 5am on Monday as we heard all the kids getting up, we don't know why so early! We have the boys dorm above us and they decided to play basketball at this time, so all we could hear was 'thump, thump, thump, thump' for the next hour or so. Florence spoke to them at dinner that night and said 'NO more basketballs upstairs', the boys were just laughing so she said 'I might just come right up and take it away', which made them laugh harder. Then I was asked by one of the older girls 'so what of theirs will you take away if Florence is taking the ball?' It wasn't till we said they wouldn't get a lollipop that they all agreed :P

It was back to school on Monday and this time we went to help in the pre-unit class, these guys are older than the middle class, although they joined with the baby class to make a grand total of eleven kids. We still haven't worked out why the baby class join with the oldest class rather than the middle one! So confused!

So, here Florence and I were, sitting at the back of class after meeting the two teachers Ann and Jane, ready to watch and help out when... we were asked to come up front and do an activity with the kids. AH. Since then it has been non-stop teaching, we have now become 'teacher! teacher!' in the classroom. Luckily we had stencils and they all had a great time tracing them and colouring in that they refused to go to break at morning tea, we had to force them out the door. Florence and I quickly realised we needed more activities so spent our break drawing shapes on long strips of paper for them to colour in and then when they had finished we linked them all together to make one long chain. They laughed and laughed and thought it was great, so it is now hanging in their classroom! After lunch we organised to do animal masks with them, teaching them about the different animals AND much to our surprise all the primary school students from the orphanage don't go back to school in the afternoon (their school is out on the street) so they can do what they want. We had 7 of them decide they wanted to join in on the lesson and we were extremely unprepared but managed! The rest of the time was spent playing with balloons, now we have run out! I think we definitely have to buy some more!

That afternoon Ann and Jane gave us a lesson of our own in bead-making! I now have a fabulous bracelet, I think you would all be surprised by how talented I am :P We went back to the guest house and immediately all the kids ran in. Thats right, for us school doesn't end at 3.30pm, all the kids come in hoping we have colouring or an activity to do. We had big beads and decided to make bracelets with them (nothing like the ones Jane and Ann helped us make) and put bells on them and so now they all jingle when they walk! They didn't stop till all the beads were used up and it was dinner time. Mama had cooked us our own meal, seperate to the kids with potato, dried banana, zucchini and I'm not sure what else, it was really nice, though once again we couldn't finish! Mama told us that she was trying to fatten us up and the idea was to stretch our stomachs so that by the end we will be eating it all!!!!! At least that what she said has happened to other volunteers and some even came back for seconds in the end! The kids were eating something called ougali which is flour and water and hmmm, wasn't very nice, we were glad we had our own meals that night! That night we also had lollipops for all the children, little did we know they were whistle pops! We gave them out and ran straight to our rooms to escape the noise!

Tuesday... straight back to teaching with the same class, and once again we were put in charge for the day, I think we are running out of teaching ideas now! We went through the alphabet with flash cards, and created a dot-to-dot for them to do, its quite difficult as half the class are a lot older than the other half so we need separate activites for them. I also taught them a humpty song which was quite exciting. I sang 'three cheeky monkeys swinging in a tree' which has lots of hand actions and in the end the crocodile goes SNAP (where the kids do a loud clap) and eats the monekies. The kids loved going SNAP and made me sing it again straight away! After lunch we knew we needed an art activity because we would have the primary school students, so we decided to make sunglasses and decorate with stickers. We prepared for the 15 kids (more turned up to school today) and the 7 primary kids and we walked in and there were 7 MORE kids who had come in because they saw the activity. So once again we spent the lesson trying to cut out more glasses for the extra kids, but we have some great pics! We spent the rest of the day playing outside with the balls.

We get a break tomorrow as we are going to visit the college of one of the girls in the orphanage. It is an acting college and she asked us to come watch her, which is good because we need time to think of more activities for the kids, especially since they come back to our guest house each day wanting todo something. *YAWN* We also saw the other teacher, Rachel, who's class we sat in on during our first two days here and just helped out. Now she wants to know when we will be back to teach her class, telling me that this time we could pick the activities!

Now I am off home to shower! Haven't had one in two days now so I must really smell!! We never seem to have water in the morning so night showers it is :)