Teacher Skarlupka

I remember when I was still in elementary school and they would always ask me what I wanted to be when I grow up and I would always tell them right away that I want to be a teacher.  I would spend hours and hours playing with the neighbor kids playing what we called school and we loved taking turns being the teacher.  We would write up little assignment and then correct them.  I'm pretty sure that we thought we were pretty cool! haha My little childhood dream finally came true just the other day.  Emily the normally teacher at the center told me that I could teach the children whatever I wanted.  I knew that this was going to be different then when I was use to messing around with the neighbors kids.  I sure had my work cut out for me because the kids only knew very little english and I knew close to no words of their mother tongue that they are use to speaking in.  I choose to work on there shapes with them since it was around math time and I knew that they haven't covered that in awhile.  The basic shapes that we covered were triangle, circle, square, and rectangle.  They started off by singing a little welcoming song for me since I was considered their new teacher.  Whenever they sing it is so adorable!  The first thing that I did was draw the four different shapes up on the chalkboard and had the kids all together say each shape as I pointed it out.  At first there was a lot of different mix ups but it didn't take them long to get the hang of it.  I felt like we had went over the shapes at least like twenty times and I was getting so sick of it because for me it was very repetitive but I had to remind myself that these are only little kids so they need the repetition plus they aren't even speaking in there original language so this is good for them.  Once the children had the shapes all down I wrote each of the shapes names under the shape then they were handed out their notebooks and told to draw each shape and write the name under it.  This took a good thirty minutes plus I had to try to check all of them.  Thankfully Emily was helping me out and the kids that really had no idea what was going on I would send them to Emily.  Back to the chalkboard I went with forty-one pairs of eyes looking at me waiting to see what they would learn about next.  We went over the shapes one more time real quick then I tried to explain to them that we are going to make a person out of shapes.  This way we were able to work on our shapes some more but also go over some basic body parts like head and arms.  I drew a triangle and labeled it as the head.  The kids then would write this down in their notebooks.  Next I drew a circle for the stomach and eyes, rectangle for the arms and legs, and squares for the hands and feet.  I would go around the room after drawing each new body part (shape) and glance over the papers.  Some kids really got it and their person was turning out great but then there were also a handful of kids that were still looking at a blank piece of paper by the time we were finished.  As a class at the end we practiced going over the shapes and body parts one more time then those kids who had finished were allowed to go and play outside so it gave me an opportunity to work with the kids who had no idea what was going on.  This took a very long time but I'm sure it was good for these children to finally get the individual attention they need since they normal don't get any.  I felt awesome once some of the kids finally got it down.  It really felt like my time here was starting to have an impact on these kids.  Later on Emily even had me handle the kids on my own when they were drinking their porridge.  Thank goodness I remembered the start of their pray otherwise I would have no idea what to do.  The first time they did it you could tell they didn't try at all and it sounded like they were just trying to get away with something since their normal teacher wasn't there.  But I'm sure that they didn't realize that I have been listening to them do this for over a month now so I know how it is suppose to sound.  You bet I made them repeat it.  That was the end of them trying to pull my leg.  When there was only few children left in the room drinking their porridge it was nice to talk to them since we were not surrounded by all of the other little children.  That day when I went home for lunch I ate quick and then just fell asleep right away after that.  I definitely now have realized how hard Emily has to work everyday.  I don't think I could ever handle doing that everyday.  But it is fun every once in awhile.  Now time to go run around with all of the little ones outside!

Ant Attach!

Well I just got done spending about 30 minutes going through a box of Rice Krispes because the ants had gotten into my cereal box.  One by one pulling out each piece of cereal to see if there were any ants on it before I put it in a zip block bag.  I learned my lesson the hard way but I now will never leave any food out without sealing it up haha I guess it at least gave me something to do.  Since its Sunday there isn’t much excitement around here just hanging around the house with the doors and windows open enjoying the breeze and catching up on some reading.  Nothing better then a lazy day (: I did manage to work on cleaning out the fridge a bet since the owners had turned it off on me it made a lot of my food go bad and the meat from the freezer was leaking into my fridge.  So nasty!  Especially since I don’t eat meat I had to make sure whatever got on my food to give to someone else.    ughh!

Saturday's

Good morning good morning good morning!  Today I finally got to sleep in and boy did I enjoy every bit of it.  I had a very lazy morning of just laying around in my bed eating once again some dry cereal for breakfast.  I have a feeling I’m not going to want cereal in a long time when I get back to the states.  I slowly got ready for the day with a cold shower and spent a good chunk of time talking with my sister which I always enjoy (: James and Yvonne are both now in Nairobi so I will most likely being staying up at the center tonight so that way I don’t get bothered by there workers.  I hope I can get some good sleep up here!  Not much was happening up at the center this morning only about six of the sponsored kids showed up which made it very quiet.  We did some coloring for about an hour and it ended up being very calming.  Now the kids are just running around outside causing some trouble haha to me though they are just kids being kids.  They did manage to get a tennis ball stuck up on the roof that we were playing with so we had to get Wilfred over here to knock it down with a stick.  They saw that I was writing on here and to my surprise they started to read out loud what I was writing.  These little ones know a lot more English then I thought they would.  Wilfred gets to be the teacher today since Emily gets her weekends off (not really though because she told me she will be doing laundry which can take up to like five hours).  Its funny how he is walking around barefoot and teaching the kids.  I don’t think we would ever see our teachers do that back in the U.S.  It definitely makes for a lot more relaxed feel around here.  Right now they are learning how to add two digit numbers.  The examples that Wilfred is coming up with are kicking my ass right now.  When he is teaching he speaks half in English and half in their mother tongue so I can only pick up bits of what is going on.  Lets just hope he knows what he is teaching him!  I did end up enjoying my night up at the center.  I was finally able to sleep all through the night without waking up from being scared of the sounds outside.  I think it really helped having someone else around plus I wasn’t dying of heat for one night since Wilfred opened the windows for us (I couldn’t open the windows at night back at my house due to security now).  I hope I get to sleep this good the rest of the time I’m here!!

Typical Day (:

I never knew playing could be so much work!  The children here are constantly running around and never seem to lose there energy until it is time for them to go home. I just spent about an hour and a half looking for gold with the children.  It is something that they see their parents/people in the village doing all of the time.  We were smashing rocks and looking through the dirt.  I must say I’m very dirty now but I don’t think I have had this much fun playing in the dirt in a long time!  I did manage to crush my finger in between the rocks a few times, which hurt so bad!  Every time I let out a little yelp Lydia would start saying “sorry sorry” right away.  After a long day of looking for gold it is not very common that people actually find any.  Emily was telling me that once she went to go look for gold starting at 2am all the way until 5pm the next day without finding any gold at all.  She said that it is a lot of hard work and most people go without any food for that long period of time.  I don’t think I could ever do it!  After playtime the children all go running up to the kitchen as fast as they are yelling line while they are pushing and shoving to get to the front.  It can get very hectic!  They are all served hot cereal every morning around 10 or so.  Their caretakers are the ones who come and cook for the kids.  Two different ladies come everyday so they probably only have to come about once or twice a month to do cooking.  It helps with the cost of having to pay for a cook.  Plus I don’t think that the caretakers mind coming for they get to see what their child is up to then during the day.  The hot cereal is normally drunken very quickly for the kids normally don’t get breakfast before they come to the center and many of the also don’t always get dinner at night.  Well the kids are already running out of the classroom ready to start playing again so I better get back to playing in the hot African sun!  Oh boy it sure is hot out today!  The children don’t have many toys to play with outside so we were playing with a flat soccer ball.  We have to communicate through a lot of hand motions since they know only very few English words so I was surprised that we were able to make up a little game.  After I couldn’t take the sun anymore we went and found a very small piece of shade and all huddled up to try to escape from the sun a bit.  My hair was still down at the time so the children took full advantage of playing with it.  Thank goodness they are all very gentle with it so it very rarely gets pulled.  They all love the smell of my shampoo because it is something different for them!  A lot of time they just come to rub my hair and start smelling their hands.  At first I had no idea what the heck was going on and I was scared that my hair smelled bad but Emily asked one of the kids what he was doing and he explained that my hair smelled so good to him.  Most of the time it is already up in a wad though by the time I make it to the center because it is so hot.  It is really fun getting some individual time with the kids because they like to share with me everything they know.  I don’t think I have ever gone through my numbers or letters so many times.  I think I kind of have an idea of what it must be like to be a kindergarten teacher.  Since supplies are limited we have to write everything out in the dirt with either a stick or rock when we practice.  Most of my afternoon was spent playing my ukulele for the kids.  They seem to really enjoy it and the best thing this they don’t realize that I suck at playing it haha.  Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is one of their favorite songs to sing along with as well as Frere Jacques!  They actually have a lot of different songs they sing that go along with the same musical pattern as Frere Jacques, which is really helpful since that is one of the only songs I know how to play.  I spent most of my night up at the center hanging out with Wilfred and a few little kids that came to play around for a bit.  We went to the shopping center as well to go and pick up a few things that we needed to make dinner.  I got to talk with my friend Cherisse as well which I was beyond excited to get to hear a familiar voice!  My phone call didn’t last long though because I needed to add minutes to my ghetto cell phone.  Wilfred and I then made our way back up to the center to cook me some spaghetti :D (my stove is still broken here and they have been telling it would get fixed for the past two weeks) It was interesting to see the way he has to cook using fire.  I don’t think I would be able to do that haha I thought the house was going to burn down but thank goodness it didn’t.  It was very dark by the time he was done cooking so he had to walk me back to my house due to security reasons.  After tripping over many rocks in the dark and probably stepping in a lot of nasty stuff I don’t even want to think of we made it back to my kitchen and had a lot of cleaning to do.  The owners had turned off my fridge for about 3 days because they wanted to get something out of the freezer that was stuck in there but it turns out they never came back to get it so it just ended up making my food go bad in the fridge.  Thankfully Wilfred stayed to help me clean out the mess it made in my fridge and throw away any of the rotting stuff.  Once we got things some what cleaned up I was off to go and joy my wonderful plate of spaghetti and watch me some DC cupcakes then I was off to bed. 

Birthday BiRtHdAy BIRTHDAY!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!  I woke up this morning another year older!  I can't believe I'm already 19 oh my goodness I'm getting old haha It definitely wasn't the same as celebrating my birthday back at home and not going to lie I really missed my family and friends today.  I got dry cereal out of a box for breakfast yahoo for sure not the same as my parents waking me up when my favorite breakfast already sitting at the table for me waiting.  I did get to start the morning out with a greeting from my boyfriend on facetime (: that helped to cheer me up a bit.  After I got all ready for the day I was excited to get to the orphanage since I had been cooped up in my house all weekend sick ugh! Thank goodness I'm feeling much better now because I wouldn't not have wanted to be sick on my birthday.  Once I arrived at the orphanage I soon was reminded how blessed I am to be able to be celebrating my birthday surrounded by the little children I love.