It's summertime

It is officially summer at home now with school out. I am definitely getting into the routine of things now. It's been nice so far this week because for the majority of the time I have had teachers actually show up in the prep class. I will usually sit there while they teach the main lesson and then they are given exercises to work on so I will go around and work with them individually. I feel the most effective when I do that because I feel like I can catch up those kids that are behind. One thing that I am learning is that they have to be willing themselves.

A big problem, no HuGE problem at the school is cheating. That is what the students know how to do - copy off of each other. I have been trying to focus on keeping them focused on their own work. Today for their science they were learning how to classify crops into three different groups based on their growth cycles. There was a paper going around that someone had copied during the lesson so I had to take it away, but there is only so much that I can do :) Because they sign to each other it is super easy to do that behind your back. But we all have a lot of fun and we laugh when I catch them copying now because they know I won't let them do it. It is really fun for me at this point because I feel like I have a closer relationship with all of the students in the prep class now - and they are used to having me there to help.

Before our math lesson the teacher noticed that all of the kids were really tired and not paying attention. He did some stand up, sit down exercises and then told them to run around the building twice. The boys took off pretty fast but the girls were moving slow so I jumped up and started pushing and pulling them out the door. I ran with them and they thought that was pretty funny - I was pushing them along the whole time :)

One of the boys in my class is super tiny for his age! But he has a TON of attitude, he pulls the biggest faces all the time and struts everywhere he goes. It makes me laught when he wants my help because if I tell him he answers a question wrong he is CONVINCED that he really is right until I can prove him wrong. His name is Bernard. Such a little punk, but he is a lot of fun. When I got back into the class he asked if I could really run and then challenged me to a race later today. We will see how that goes :) They are quick to point out someone who did something wrong. As soon as I got back in the room kids would point to those who only ran around the building once. I see them getting mad at each other a lot for not looking at the teacher too, or leaving the classroom when they're not supposed to. It's pretty crazy how much movement happens in one day. Definitely not like any school day at home in America.

Over the weekend I went with a couple girls to Kafordua to just go explore for the afternoon. Literally everywhere we walked we had people in the trotros and taxis asking us "Where are you going" and then we'd have to respond "We are staying" over and over again. The bad thing is they couldn't really understand us either so after awhile we just stopped answering them. We decided to get ingredients and make Guacamole because it was Lindsey's birthday on Saturday. It was really interesting buying food at the little market because when we went to one stand all of the people would start calling us to go and buy something from them. We walked down a narrow area looking for Limes and it smelled aweful because they had all this meat just laying out. So many flies! Ah! The fish looked aweful just baking in the sun. There were also huge snails that one woman was selling - so disgusting.

I have become the band-aid woman at the primary school now. That is good and bad. Good because the young kids always have these huge gashes, mostly because they beat on each other, and so they really do need covered. Bad because I started to put band-aids on a few kids so now all of them come up to me and want something for every little scratch. And they bug the other volunteer girls for band-aids too. It is a lot of fun to be Miss Nurse to the kids and clean their wounds then put a band-aid on it, but I have a feeling that was a bad thing to start because it will be never ending. They are adorable after I finish though because they sign a huge thank you. The kids are super tough! Not only do they barely move when I'm cleaning with little alcohol swabs, but if I had a scratch like that when I was a little girl I would be bawling when I first got it and they are barely phased.

We are traveling this weekend with the Kibi volunteers to Cape Coast for 4 days so I am really excited. We will visit the slave castles, go to the canopy walk, stay in some hotels and go to the beach. I think the drive is like 6-7 hours which is really long, but I think it will be a good break for everyone to do something new for the weekend. Thats all for now.....