Back at School

Wow! The first week back at school certainly was crazy! It feels like a month has passed and not just a week. Here's the latest news on the goings on here in Morogoro:

Kjirstin has officially returned to her home safely. The kids certainly miss her and I think that everyone has been asking me about her and how she is doing. Some even want me to call her while we're all at school so they can talk to her. The only problems with this plan are 1) the time change, 2) I own the cheapest phone I could possibly purchase here and I'm not sure it's capable of international phone calls, and 3) Lord only knows how much such a phone call would cost!!

I received some big news this week when I was emailed the list of donations that were made to myself and other UMC volunteer missionaries. I have finished raising the amount of money to cover my costs of living here in Morogoro for the year!! I am so blessed and excited because so far I've even received a little bit more than what I was asking for to cover my costs. This means that that little bit extra along with other donations given to me in the next two months will be given to my site here to help with construction costs at the school and the church!! I'm SOOO excited about this!! :D

Nathan, the pastor's youngest son and one of my former students, came home from secondary school last week on Saturday evening! He got back so late that I didn't get to see him until Sunday at church. It has been so great to see him again and see that he is doing well. It seems that he is progressing well at school and is having a good time, but I think he misses home a lot. It's hard enough to move away from home when you're 18 going to college, but he's only 13! Sometimes I forget how young these kids actually are. In so many ways they act and seem so much older to me and it's because they have to. So much responsibility is given to such young children. Of course, in other ways they act just their age and I'm glad that they have the chance to have fun and be kids!! As for Nathan and I, we watched Iron Man and The Avengers and have decided that we'll watch the other movies like Captain America and Thor when he returns in June.

The week at school progressed as normal. There have been some schedule changes because they had to divide Class I. There were so many kids in that class and the parents were complaining. Thus, the school was forced to quickly build a new classroom for those kids. And I'm not kidding when I say quickly! It's like the new building just sprang up overnight! It's not finished, though, because of money issues, but it's got everything they need a classroom to have. The teachers who were teaching those classes were really overwhelmed after the division, so some teachers who were teaching the upper grades have been shifted down. As for me, I am remaining with the same classes as before and I'm 100% fine with that! I've got enough students, grading, and marking to do as it is (maybe even too much).

Class V has begun their reading unit. So far it's been really fun! I'm starting slowly with some short, children's books that have good plots. I'm reading the books to the class and then we're taking it all apart: title, author, illustrator, characters, story vocabulary, questions, plot, setting, etc. We're even doing coloring!! We started with the story of Little Red Riding Hood and the kids had to draw six small pictures of what happened in the plot. They had SO much fun with it!! We've started Madeline and next we're going to graduate to a short chapter book. My hope is that we'll have enough time for them to be able to do their own book reports with a partner. Then they can report on it to the class!

With Class VII, I'm about to start a different type of reading unit. I've searched online and found websites with all kinds of short passages with comprehension questions. I've been copying and pasting them all into one word document and this weekend I printed them off in town. Thus, the students will all have their own copies of the passages and I've got the questions. I'm going to write the questions on the board for the students to copy and answer. I'm really excited about this because I feel like reading is a struggle for the students and reading comprehension is not something that always comes very easily. I tried to get a variety of passages which are written for different grade levels (everything from 4th grade to 8th grade) and ones of different topics. It was sometimes difficult to find ones that I felt like the students could relate to well enough. A lot of the passages really reflected a western mindset or talked about things in America. I basically ended up picking all the non-fiction passages.

As for news of the weekend I've been really busy. It feels like I haven't stopped at all!! I did my shopping in town, dropped off my tennis shoes to be repaired (again), ran, played frisbee, got stuff copied for Class VII, today was Madam Ngoy's birthday (pastor's wife) so we had a celebration at lunch time, Nathan and I have been watching movies, English Choir has been meeting again and we've gained some new members, etc. Today was Nathan's last day in Morogoro before returning to school, so I said goodbye to him and I'm praying that his break in June will start before I leave Tanzania! Apparently, though, he won't find out until later, but everyone is pretty confident that he'll be back before mid-June.

Well, that's all the updates for now! Hope you're having a wonderful and restful weekend!!

May the Lord Bless You and Keep You,
~Christine