Kids All Around

Yo,

Sorry for the lapse of updates for the past few weeks. As predicted, the kids sucked all of the energy out of me and the thought of having to write a blog update just became too much, even though it doesn’t take long to do at all.

The holiday activities went pretty well. We never quite had 300 kids show up, but there were about 200, then towards the end numbers dwindled a little bit, more like 150. Our organization gradually decreased by the end too. The first couple of days we were really organized; every group had a letter and they rotated at specific times. By the end, we had a vague idea of what we were going to do that day, but we would mostly just give the kids a bunch of balls and tell them generally where to go and not to cause too much trouble. One thing I do not miss in life is being in the 9th grade. I think it might be a universal fact that all 9th grade girls are mean and have the biggest attitudes ever. Every single thing we did they were just not having it. We heard that some of the older students didn’t want to attend the program anymore and the parents started lying to them, saying that if they kept going we were going to give them KFC on the last day. Man were those kids disappointed when they got a bowl of rice and some meaty soup that day for lunch. Overall it went pretty well though.

We are off to Port Elizabeth for the soccer game this Thursday. I keep forgetting about the trip because it seems weird that the World Cup is coming to an end. Unfortunately I don’t really care about any of the teams that are still in it that much. I was really hoping that Ghana would make it. I didn’t see the game that knocked them out, but I heard the refereeing was not so great and that they should have won. I think I am just going to root for the team that has the best looking players since I don’t really have much more to go off of. I don’t know who this is at the time, I looked at the team members and honestly none of the teams were that impressive. All I can say is that Germany is definitely out of the contest. Maybe I will just wear a bunch of South African stuff and just go as a general supporter of the World Cup.

The sad part of the past couple of weeks is that I finished Harry Potter. I was hoping it would last a little longer because it was such a nice thing to sit down and read at night. Despite the series’ length, it did not last as long as I had hoped. It was really good though, I was quite pleased with the last book; I was a little worried I wouldn’t like it because those types of series are so hard to write a good ending to. I have moved on to some of the American classics that I never read in school for one reason or another. I am currently working on “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.” All this book is teaching me is that I have the reading comprehension of a 2nd grader. I have to read everything twice and I still barely know what is going on…and this book is supposed to be for children.

I am not really sure what the plan is for the week at work. I might be helping some of the sewing ladies make chair covers, but I don’t really want to help them because this is work for them that they will get paid for and I don’t want to take that away from any of them. I also am less qualified than any of them at sewing considering I am just a self-taught person who probably does most things technically incorrectly. I think we are going to run the computer class again. We are waiting for a program that is being designed elsewhere currently. I will actually be the teacher for this round of students instead of an assistant to a computer program. I am much happier about this because I often felt like I could explain things better than the program. I think we are going to do this old school with textbooks and lectures this time, then have the students do different exercises on the computer during the afternoon. So instead of having a morning and afternoon session we will just have one class who will be there all day. I know that is a long day, but several students said on their evaluations that class should have been longer. I guess when you are traveling an hour + to get to class, it makes sense to have a longer class. They will get more out of the class too because they will practice with the programs more. We shall see, it would be good to get another round of students started though because there is currently a pretty big waiting list that is only going to get longer with time.

Well that is all from my end. Happy 4th of July! I am so jealous that everyone got to see fireworks but me : ( I lit off some sparklers, but that was the extent of fireworks in my life. We had people over and made some 4th of July foods, but nothing too extravagant. It is hard to get people excited about America’s independence day here, mostly our friends were just humoring us, but I still appreciated their efforts to support us.

Peace,
Kelly