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Published: February 1st 2014
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Colour Box 3
Daniel and Prisca, one of our neighbours, who is Daniel's age Sorry for the long delay.... I have been quite busy and very tired, (I have almost a nap a day). But not today (Friday)!! I was going to post this yesterday but as fates had it there was no electricity and therefore no internet to do much, except to write it and wait for the internet, yet it never came... so here we are on Friday the 30th January 2014....
So this week has been a tiny bit crazy. I have been at the nursery school this week until today (Friday) where I spent the morning at Glad Tidings the orphanage where Emily did her beautiful paintings, (they still remember you!)
This week at the nursery I had my 1st spontaneous lesson with the children. It was at lunch time, we were waiting for the nsima to cook. Some of the children were in the classroom writing on the chalk board, I joined in as well, after a while I noticed that lots of the children had sat down on the floor or at the tables and where waiting for me to start a lesson.
I rubbed out what I was doing
Trinomial Cube
A heart that Daniel made out of the Trinomial Cube pieces and then drew the only thing I am capable of drawing properly, a house, with a triangle roof, square building, square windows, rectangle door and a circle door-knob (with trees and grass). Once I had finished I asked the children what I had drawn, then asked them to name the shapes. I wrote 'House' at the top and asked everyone what the 1st letter was.
At this time lots of the teachers had come in to watch me, I felt very strange like I was putting on a show. When we had finished with the letters I started drawing stick men, (that's as far my artistic abilities go). I asked the teachers what 'Dad' was in Chichewa and they said it was 'Bambo' I then asked the children what 'Bambo' was in English. (Some of them clapped when I got the Chichewa right.) I got some of the children to come up and draw the 'Mum', 'Girl' and 'Boy' for the family house. I was about to ask them who was in their family but we were told to was our hands with soap as lunch was ready.
Another time at the nursery we
The view from our bolder
As you can see this is the view from the top of the mountain... the walking boots is me and the other ones are Jessica had to wait for the hall to be cleared for porridge, so one of the Korean teachers and I got everyone in a circle and did ring games, I introduced everyone to the 'Hokey Cokey' and they gave me funny looks again, but joined in after a while. (again the Malawian teachers stopped what they were doing to watch me). This was very fun.
Some of the teachers are trying to teach me Chichewa and I can now say "How are you? "I am fine, thanks and you?" and "Thank you" I tried to have a short conversation with one of the children, I got as far as "How are you?" but she stopped in her tracks and ran in the opposite direction we were walking. A few children who were watching us laughed.
This week I was on toothbrush duty a few times, where I had to say the names on the toothbrush and give it to the right child, this was very hard as I couldn't pronounce most of the names and I didn't know many of the children's names. Sometimes the teachers helped but they were what seemed to be an
My new garden
This is what I see when I look out of the Dining room window in-depth conversation about something. So I ended up giving the wrong toothbrushes to the wrong child... Opps. But the second time I did the toothbrushes I think I got most of them right... Hopefully. But at least now I think I know most of their names... Well the easy ones anyway, like Prince, Loveness, Daniel, Amara, Christopher and Steven. (I think I know others but can't know without looking at them)
I am getting quite good at eating nsima I think, as we eat it with our hands and dip it into stews of different things, we have had pumpkin leaves most days this week but with different protein for example Chicken, kidney beans or Kapenta (dried anchovies including their heads, bones and all, boiled in salt water and onions). Not my favourite dish, but the chicken was yummy.
I keep forgetting my camera so I don't have many pics.. sorry!! But I did bring it with me on a hike I did with Jessica who lives very close and is lovely, we climbed to to the top of one of the mountains by the house it was very high, we could see the
View from the mountain
This is kinda self-explanatory... lake and lots of the villages around us, I took pictures of the view from the top 😊. Marryanne told us to take Chase, a very big dog who likes chasing things, she said he will case away the snakes who live in the grass! I assume he did as we didn't see any. To get to the base of the mountain we had to walk through the village and we managed to pick up another dog on our way, we didn't know who's it was or where it came from. I thought it could have been Chicken, another one of Marryanne's dogs but I was not too sure. But he/she seemed happy and joined our party. That was a great hike because I didn't know Jessica that well it got us talking and made me forget about the steepness... well most of the time.... Once we were at the top we sat down on a bolder and ate half a maize cob that was cooked over an open fire, it was a bit like sweetcorn but with out any flavour except for smoke, it was surprisingly nice!
This week I have also been trying out some
Another view...
Just to prove that I did it!!! of the Montessori materials I brought with me on Daniel and he really enjoys them, we have been doing about one a day. I have a few pictures of these to...
Today (Friday) I was at Glad Tidings, watching the teaching and playing and talking to the workers there, it was really hot and humid so I couldn't stay outside with the children for long, I went into the office and they asked me to type the children's register onto a laptop, as they didn't really know how to start. I showed them and did most of the names, how old they are, who their guardian is and which village they live at. Once Emmanuel came to pick me up I had almost finished the list. He drove us to his office and showed me around. The internet was down as it had been raining really hard so we had lunch at a cafe and he took me round to the main shops in Salima. I got a phone charger for my phone so I didn't need to use his any more whoop whoop! We went back to his office when the internet was back on, Emmanuel
Prisca's building
This is Prisca and her Castle/town/shops did some work and I went on pintrest for the 1st time in ages, weirdly that made me miss England home... after a few hours we drove home and I played with the kids and ate catfish for the 1st time! (which I enjoyed) 😊
I saw my 1st firefly yesterday and Emmanuel said that the field outside is ablaze with light from them in the evenings, we will go and see it soon. Although I accidentally killed one today... Opps...
Overall I think it was a very successful 1st week of teaching and tomorrow we are all going to the lake, including Jessica and some other girls who we will hopefully all go to Zambia together... I will try to bring my camera!!!
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