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.