Tuesday, August 11, 2009

My First Day of School

Today was my  first day of school at the supplemental school. The basic school is on Holiday, so we only went from 8 to 10:30. It will be like that for two weeks and then we will have a week off. The basic school takes the whole month of August off. Kids pay to come to school in Zambia, including the supplemental school, which was started by one of the missionaries, Kathi Merritt, years ago. It is held in a quaint one room school house, with two picnic tables, a teacher table and a table for the bigger kids.  It was a pretty good first day, considering I have been in Zambia four days. The other teachers are nice. Royness sat across from me, so I asked her most of my questions. I tried to do more observing than asking questions, so I could kind of soak it all in and not be too annoying.  Each kid has a file with papers, and they are given two at a time. As they finish the papers, they bring it back to the teachers to be checked, and then they correct the questions they got wrong until it is right. Once they finish their file, they come up and read to us. They papers they work on are from America, so a lot of the stories and words are not culturally relevant, and can be difficult to explain. Mermaids and the story of Pecos Bill were just a few of the things I encountered today.  It is interesting to see the way their system works. Each kid works at their own pace, so the whole class is never working on the same paper. We also have grades 2-6 at one time, which also throws a kink in explanation time. There were a few times that I would check a paper and if a kid got most of the questions wrong, then I couldn't resist working through it with them.  I know there are reasons behind their system, I just don't know what they are yet. I am eager to discover them!

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Another black eye... almost

If you have ever heard me talk about black eyes, you know I don't hate them. For some reason I think they are kind of cool, even though they look disgusting, and hurt. It has been a really long time since I have had a full black eye. In fact, my most memorable black eye happened when I was 4 and I was playing baseball in our front yard. I was catcher and as my brother came up to bat, he missed the ball but made contact with my face. Probably the best black eye ever and the worst way to get one. 

Back to present day in Zambia...I received a rude awakening Saturday morning around 6:30 am. As I was readjusting my pillow, sleeping restlessly, I hit my head hard on the side of my dresser.  At first I thought I would only have a huge bump right by my eye, and then I realized I was bleeding. My thought process went something like this: 

"I am going to have to get stitches in Africa...Can Betsy give me stitches?...She took out my stitches one time...Should I tell my parents if I get stitches?...Wait...Am i dreaming right now?...Maybe I should go look at it..."

After looking in the mirror, I realized it probably wasn't that deep, but I decided to have Betsy (she's a nurse) look at it. She concurred that it wasn't deep enough for stitches, and I went back to bed. I did have a nice bruise and a mean headache all day on Saturday, but you will be happy to know it is healing nicely, and I will soon have a new scar on my right eye, directly below a scar from eighth grade basketball. I now have 4 scars from my eyebrows to my bottom eyelid. That takes talent, ya know.