Happy 8 weeks! What a wonderful way to celebrate this occasion this morning, we had Mass...in English!!!!!!! My first English Mass in two months!!!!! It was so comforting to be able to fully participate and understand everything that was going on, the words being prayed and the music being sung meant so much, more than they ever have before. It was just what I needed this morning, a great way to praise God and celebrate these past two months.
Well now that I wrote about my first day of school two weeks late, I am going to write about the past three weeks of school. First I have to say that I cannot believe I have been teaching for three weeks. The days go by so quickly!!! I would like to share some of the highlights of my time at Gonzaga.
David. David is a student who I will probably be sharing many stories about. He is 9 years old and has an amazing imagination. He does not have too many friends and so oftentimes entertains himself during Tea and Lunch. So one day while I was outside with the students I look over and see David in the middle of the field dancing. Yes, David is dancing the Macarena. And it was a fully legit Macarena at that. He had all of the hand motions, the hip wiggle (which was his favorite) and the jumping and doing it in a different direction. He was even mouthing something but I couldn't hear what it was. Then he tried it again...with a half coconut shell balanced on his head.If it fell off he had to start over again. I don't think he saw me because he would have stopped, but it was so entertaining to watch. A few days later I saw him by himself again so I went over to him. I asked what he was doing as he was sawing at some leaves with a large plastic pipe. He responded "cooking." "Oh," I said, "what are you cooking?" "Meat." Cool. So I sat down and engaged him in conversation about his cooking. He had taken a broken slab of concrete, found some leaves an a broken plastic pipe and started chopping the meat. Then he "turned the stove on," literally turned an imaginary dial on he front of the bench he was going to cook on and put all of the chopped meat on the stove. He added some salt (dirt) and some pepper (dirt from another location) and then stirred it all together. What comes next is great. He found a rock and said it was a coconut. So he took a "machete" and cut it open, poured the coconut juice into his concoction and then started grating the coconut!! Of course he added these shavings to the dish. When it was fially finished we had to go inside, but I was really looking forward to getting to try some. Maybe next time.
Lunch today was my favorite part of the day. Nicholas brought a "frisbee" to school, actually a plastic top of a bucket and started teaching some of the students how to play. So I joined in that for a little. I kicked the soccer ball around when it went out of bounds and got reactions from the students "Teacha, teacha!" Yes, teacha Emily can play soccer. The girls dragged me over to play rede with them, a surprisingly violent game involving throwing a ball at people and then targeting one person to hit. When you are hit you are out. I played with all of these girls who are half my height, I was not at an advantage.
I have a posse at Gonzaga. There are three or four girls who follow me around everywhere. Whenever we go outside they are right behind me. The entire time we are outside they are asking me questions and sitting with me. I ask "dont you want to go play with your friends?" They respond "We can play here!" I also have a student who has a crush on me. As the days go by it becomes more and more obvious, but also really cute. Today he found out how old I was because th girls were asking me, and I asked him how old he was. He is 9. He started off by asking me if Teacher Nicholas was my brother, when I said yes and saw his reaction I knew there was a reason for the question. This boy tried so hard to be the last one in the classroom so he can walk with me places. Today he purposely didnt finish his test so that he could stay later with me, I know this because he is a smart boy and usually finished relatively quickly. He just hangs around trying to pass time so that other students will leave. He sat with me a few times at Tea and Lunch when I was sitting with the girls. It takes guts at that age to sit with the opposite gender when all of your friends are on the opposite side of the room. I am sure I will have more stories about him as well.
Well, tomorrow is my first PTA meeting which will be conducted in Kiswahili so I will have no idea what is going on. I get to teach religion to Standard three!!! I am so excited about this. Teaching religion is possibly one of my favorite things to do.
So some reflections of these past weeks: Being in Africa is difficult. Being so far away from home and friends and family is hard. This is definitely a challenging vocation and sometimes I think, God are you serious that you want me here? But then days like today happen, or the kids from across the road see me and come running to me, or I understand a little more Swahili and I am reminded of my purpose here. I am reminded of the Gospel from my sending Mass, about how Jesus is the vine and we are the branches. I am totally a branch right now, depending completely and wholeheartedly on that vine to give me everything I need. How can I survive here on my own? There is no way. That vine has been the one thing keeping me going. Without it my work here would be fruitless.
I love Africa. I love the people here. I do not want to be any other place in the world. I have been embraced by everything here and in turn I have given my heart to everything here. I am so blessed to be able to have this experience, and I hope that through these messages you can share in my joy and happiness here. You have been so supportive in my formation and my journey. I cannot thank you all enough, so I hope these glimpses into my life here will show a little bit how grateful I am for everything you all have done.
Take care, God Bless, and at Mass or whenever you are looking at the sky, know that I am sharing in that same Eucharist and looking at the same moon and stars. I think about that every night. I miss you all.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
And You Do the Hokey Pokey...
I started teaching almost two weeks ago already. Needless to say these past two weeks have been extremely busy and that is why my post about the first day of school is two weeks late. But here it is anyway.
Tuesday, January 13th marked the beginning of the 2009 academic year. The students had just had a month and a half off from school and I was just celebrating my being in country for 5 weeks. I am teaching at Gonzaga Primary School which started last year with the generous donation from a family wanting to promote Jesuit ecucation. There was a school/orphanage, Sarah Cobet, which was closing so Gonzaga took in the orphans to educate. Now we teach those students, many poor students from the area as well as many orphans from an organization called S.O.S. I am teaching standard 3 and 4, about the age equivalent of grades 3 and 4 (although I have students ranging from 8-11 in my standard 3). I am the class teacher for standard three so this means I am basically their homeroom teacher/moderator/mother at school/playmate/anything else you can think of.
So on the first day of school Nicholas and I walked to Gonzaga through the twisty alleyways behind peoples houses, over little streams, and through piles of garbage. We rounded the corner and saw a massive amount of little people standing inside the gates of Gonzaga. I became even more excited than I was before. We had a staff meeting the Wednesday before school started (yes the first staff meeting for the whole year was held only 6 days before school started). The meeting was supposed to begin at 7:30 but in actuality and true to Tanzanian time we did not start until 10:30 and we finished at 1:30. We are supposed to have about 12 people on staff, by this meeting we had 10. At the meeting one of the teachers told us he was not going to return so we were down to 9. We had one other new teacher at the meeting and then two days later he also, through text message, told us he was not coming to teach anymore. So we are starting off short 4 teachers. Ok, its ok we can do this! On the first day of school we have two new teachers who were hired over the weekend. However, one of the teachers from last year did not show up because he was sick.
So I get to school and I am told that the classroom I was shown the day before was not going to be my classroom anymore. I had already put my one poster up on the wall and started to get the feel of the room, but Hey! nothing like some last minute changes! Ok, so my classroom is moved, thats ok. We have no power. We have no running water. We have no class lists so I do not know who is supposed to be in my class. We have one schedule for the entire school to share. We have one computer at Gonzaga but we cannot use it because we have no power and therefore we cannot print off any more copies of the schedule. We are starting out on a great foot. We line up for assembly and I find the standard 3s. I was the first one to introduce myself, I was obviously the one who stuck out the most. After a little while Nicholas calls me up in front of everyone and invites me to do the hokey pokey with him. Nothing like doing the hokey pokey in front of 300 students on the first day of work. I had a great time! The students love it and by now we have done it a few times (the students laugh whenever Teacher Emily does the hokey pokey).
After assembly we went to our classroom and I was supposed to entertain the students for the first two hours.....I had things planned but I was assuming that the students would a least have a pencil and a notebook with them. I was wrong. None of the students had a pencil, notebook, or any of their textbooks. Gonzaga is an English medium school yet the accents of the students are so difficult to understand. They had a difficult time with my accent too. So here we are, me and 30 9 year old trying to communicate with each other, but mostly just saying what? huh? what? We went over class rules, the schedule of classes and I tried to have them write down some information about themselves. I gave them all index cards and wrote on the board what I wanted them to write on it. So many of them had questions that I wrote an example on the board using some of my information. So I wrote "my name is Emily Wallace, my birthday is May 30, my favorite color is green, I have an older brother Patrick and a younger sister Kate." I cannot tell you how many students I have whose names are Emily and whose birthday is May 30th and favorite color is green! I knew this was going to be a trick. For those of you who are interested, I have some interesting names of students. Wenceslaus, Moses, Sharifa, Witness, Shalom, Claus, Joha, Enea, Manka, Mpeli, and Anuciata. I will definitely be sharing stories about some of these students, I have many already.
I survived that first day, and the first week and even the second week. It gets hot at the school, especially since we have no fans in the classroom, but we also have no power to run them...
I cannot tell you all enough how much I love teaching. I was very apprehensive about teaching before I came here and even while prepping here but I leave at the end of the day excited to go back the next morning. Every morning when I wake up I cant wait to get to school and greet all of the students. This is the first time that I have been this excited about a job. This is exactly where I am supposed to be. I have no doubt in my mind. God has a crazy plan, it was this time last year that I was finishing my application for JVI and I was so unsure of what I was going to do this year. After many twists and turns, I have been led to this place so far away from my family and friends yet so close to my calling to love and serve. I am experiencing a peace in my life because I have such satisfaction in knowing that this is where God wants me. Every time I see my students and they run up to me, I know that this is how God is calling me to love each and every day for the next two years and I could not be happier.
I miss you all and I hope you are finding peace this new year.
Tuesday, January 13th marked the beginning of the 2009 academic year. The students had just had a month and a half off from school and I was just celebrating my being in country for 5 weeks. I am teaching at Gonzaga Primary School which started last year with the generous donation from a family wanting to promote Jesuit ecucation. There was a school/orphanage, Sarah Cobet, which was closing so Gonzaga took in the orphans to educate. Now we teach those students, many poor students from the area as well as many orphans from an organization called S.O.S. I am teaching standard 3 and 4, about the age equivalent of grades 3 and 4 (although I have students ranging from 8-11 in my standard 3). I am the class teacher for standard three so this means I am basically their homeroom teacher/moderator/mother at school/playmate/anything else you can think of.
So on the first day of school Nicholas and I walked to Gonzaga through the twisty alleyways behind peoples houses, over little streams, and through piles of garbage. We rounded the corner and saw a massive amount of little people standing inside the gates of Gonzaga. I became even more excited than I was before. We had a staff meeting the Wednesday before school started (yes the first staff meeting for the whole year was held only 6 days before school started). The meeting was supposed to begin at 7:30 but in actuality and true to Tanzanian time we did not start until 10:30 and we finished at 1:30. We are supposed to have about 12 people on staff, by this meeting we had 10. At the meeting one of the teachers told us he was not going to return so we were down to 9. We had one other new teacher at the meeting and then two days later he also, through text message, told us he was not coming to teach anymore. So we are starting off short 4 teachers. Ok, its ok we can do this! On the first day of school we have two new teachers who were hired over the weekend. However, one of the teachers from last year did not show up because he was sick.
So I get to school and I am told that the classroom I was shown the day before was not going to be my classroom anymore. I had already put my one poster up on the wall and started to get the feel of the room, but Hey! nothing like some last minute changes! Ok, so my classroom is moved, thats ok. We have no power. We have no running water. We have no class lists so I do not know who is supposed to be in my class. We have one schedule for the entire school to share. We have one computer at Gonzaga but we cannot use it because we have no power and therefore we cannot print off any more copies of the schedule. We are starting out on a great foot. We line up for assembly and I find the standard 3s. I was the first one to introduce myself, I was obviously the one who stuck out the most. After a little while Nicholas calls me up in front of everyone and invites me to do the hokey pokey with him. Nothing like doing the hokey pokey in front of 300 students on the first day of work. I had a great time! The students love it and by now we have done it a few times (the students laugh whenever Teacher Emily does the hokey pokey).
After assembly we went to our classroom and I was supposed to entertain the students for the first two hours.....I had things planned but I was assuming that the students would a least have a pencil and a notebook with them. I was wrong. None of the students had a pencil, notebook, or any of their textbooks. Gonzaga is an English medium school yet the accents of the students are so difficult to understand. They had a difficult time with my accent too. So here we are, me and 30 9 year old trying to communicate with each other, but mostly just saying what? huh? what? We went over class rules, the schedule of classes and I tried to have them write down some information about themselves. I gave them all index cards and wrote on the board what I wanted them to write on it. So many of them had questions that I wrote an example on the board using some of my information. So I wrote "my name is Emily Wallace, my birthday is May 30, my favorite color is green, I have an older brother Patrick and a younger sister Kate." I cannot tell you how many students I have whose names are Emily and whose birthday is May 30th and favorite color is green! I knew this was going to be a trick. For those of you who are interested, I have some interesting names of students. Wenceslaus, Moses, Sharifa, Witness, Shalom, Claus, Joha, Enea, Manka, Mpeli, and Anuciata. I will definitely be sharing stories about some of these students, I have many already.
I survived that first day, and the first week and even the second week. It gets hot at the school, especially since we have no fans in the classroom, but we also have no power to run them...
I cannot tell you all enough how much I love teaching. I was very apprehensive about teaching before I came here and even while prepping here but I leave at the end of the day excited to go back the next morning. Every morning when I wake up I cant wait to get to school and greet all of the students. This is the first time that I have been this excited about a job. This is exactly where I am supposed to be. I have no doubt in my mind. God has a crazy plan, it was this time last year that I was finishing my application for JVI and I was so unsure of what I was going to do this year. After many twists and turns, I have been led to this place so far away from my family and friends yet so close to my calling to love and serve. I am experiencing a peace in my life because I have such satisfaction in knowing that this is where God wants me. Every time I see my students and they run up to me, I know that this is how God is calling me to love each and every day for the next two years and I could not be happier.
I miss you all and I hope you are finding peace this new year.
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