This Little Light of Mine

What a relaxing weekend! It's been quite some time that I've had a weekend that didn't have it's own agenda, it's own list and it's own priorities that needed to be met before the following week, or crammed in between traveling and all the joys that come along with that. I think I had let the simple pleasures of enjoying a beautiful day slip past me between planning trips or even just going at such a fast pace.. this slower tempo is a nice change and I am enjoying it. If you know anything about me and my study habits, you know that I normally don't begin a paper, or start to study, till the very last minute possible, and for some reason even though my 12 page paper had an extension, I still couldn't pull myself to start it until, brace yourself, the day it was due. Oops! But as I finished it up and handed it in, the fun began for the weekend. Friday I went to one of the shopping malls here and found my new favorite shop to buy dresses (I bought two!). Then it was a girls night out for dinner which is always fun. One of my flatmates Ashley is actually moving out on Monday, which is so soon, and so sad! And now I'm under two months left of being here. It's a long time and a very short time all at the same time. When people used to ask us how long we were here to we could say, 4 more months! Or we've only been here one month, two months, now we are just at three months. Wow, I do wish it was longer. I mean I love you all and definitely miss your faces and have loads to be excited for when I come home (honestly, sometimes I catch myself getting so excited about the things to come this summer that I can't wait!) but there is still so much left to do. And with all my school work picking up, and now almost my entire month of June booked (I'll tell you about that later) it hardly feels like enough time. But have no fear, my list of places to go and people to see around the world is continuing to grow! Ahhh I love it!

So I understand that I am very far behind on my blogs... I never got to express how much fun it is to road trip across South Africa, but there was a moment this past week that I want to share with you all. You see, Tuesday nights are the nights that I, along with three other American students, go into the Walmer Township and teach. The focus is supposed to be different life lessons and sometimes we do have a bit of a communication barrier. Not knowing what it's like to be a 4th grader growing up in a township in SA kind of puts a limit on some of our knowledge of their background, but it is a give and take relationship, and even Katrin, the German intern kind of in charge of the program, is growing on me. It could be tough work and long days with those rowdy kids. The idea behind the Masfunde Organization is to invest in these children long term. They started with 3rd graders, then the next year they had both 3rd and 4th graders, then 3rd, 4th and 5th graders because they are keeping the same youth over time so that it becomes a steady area of their life where they can be educated, encouraged and grow. Pretty cool right? So before our two weeks off for break and a long Easter weekend, we sat down with Katrin and tried, or attempted might be a better word, to find common ground on the next lessons we would be planning. Instead of short term topics, it was decided that a more beneficial way to approach teaching these lessons would be to have multiple weeks on the same topic. So Katrin wanted to do a global cultures, and figure out a way for them to learn about other countries around the world. Not only that, but do the research and learn how to present, and a whole other list of things we don't need to get into. So meeting the night before, our group figured out what we were going to plan... we decided to have the kids make travel logs, so they can track where they are learning, write down all of the interesting facts and have a record of their new information. We also wanted to give them an idea of the importance and significance of traveling so we brought in pictures that each of us, as their teachers, had been and brought in a computer so they could watch a slide show of it.
Now, one of the biggest problems that I have noticed with the children is that they look for the easy way out. When we painted murals a few weeks ago they couldn't work together or grasp the concept that we wanted them to look good, and they had time so to take their time on it. They didn't do a very good job of sharing or investing time into any of their work and we as the teachers left feeling extremely frustrated and just kind of let down. We had spent a lot of time preparing and they didn't care at all. Discussing this, we kind of realized that it is a common trait for the kids to not put much effort into anything, they see an easy route and take it. They haven't done anything in our class that they could actually be proud of, so when we sat down to make the travel logs I made it very clear that this project was going to be different. I stressed that each page needed to be folded perfectly, and they were going to be using them the next 6 weeks and that you could decorate the cover how ever you wanted... and it worked! All 11 of them sat almost silently working for the first 5-10 minutes, and as always when that happens, my favorite part of Learn4Life happens, they start singing. It is usually one Simma, one of the louder, bolder girls, who doesn't look up from her work, but she will quietly start humming and then the humming will grow a little bit louder, then the other girls will catch on to the tune and join in singing "...this little light of mine.." and then pretty soon 9 or 10 of them are all singing This Little Light of Mine...
And then I feel bad for being worked up about all of those other silly things because that moment right there just melts my heart...
I really do love those kids. I hope they are able to see all the potential they have.


More later =)