Summer School etc

I just wanted to post something short since I'll be headed to the internet cafe sometime today. It's eid-el-fitr though, the end of Ramadan (Pray Day), so I'm not sure the place is going to be open. Muslims, most of the population, will be praying/eating/celebrating. My host family is Christian. We went and bought some pork. I don't know if any slight is meant by that? Probably not. Christians and Muslims seem to get along completely here.

Nothing much is all that new really. We started summer school, so I've been teaching two classes, Junior Secondary School 1 (JSS1) and 2 at this muslim girls school called Amadiya. Apparently 1500 girls are enrolled here during the regular school sessions.

I run a class with two other people. I'm teaching science and the other two are teaching english and math. I think I'm doing fairly well and just need to improve on board management, keeping a quiet class, clarity, speed, and volume of speech. The students seem to be enjoying the lessons I'm giving them in matter and energy. I've made some demos, and brought in local examples of elements, mixtures, and compounds. I was able to demonstrate chemical -> electrical -> magnetic energy transformations with an electromagnet I made from a curtain wire, a battery, and a nail I found in my classroom. Our one class, JSS1, is right out of primary school, so we aren't even sure most of them are understanding our english. You need to slow down your speaking a whole lot.

This will be a different experience from what I'll probably be doing in Mambolo (my village) for the next two years. I'm pretty sure I'll be teaching much older kids in the Senior Secondary School (SSS) 3 and 4. I hope to be a rolemodel for the older kids that have potential and desire to be scientists and engineers. There are a lot of randomly bright students here, like anywhere, and a whole lot of less than bright students. Being in Bo, a big city, is different as well. Kids that are coming to summer schools are ones that want to come or have parents that are interested in getting them educations.

I got the package from my parents! It only took a couple weeks to ship, surprisingly, and it is not at all tampered with. They sent me some cool books, delicious food, and other things that I really appreciate! I've been making a lot of paper airplanes and things using the book on paper airplanes they sent me. I'm again finding that a lot of kids here don't know how to share things. They also don't know how to take care of something and not destroy it in a short time. So I mean, they like the planes, but it's really annoying when every kid wants their own, saying "yu go mek fo mi!" and obviously don't understand when I say "A mek for una-ol!". There's a culture of just asking for things here, and it is starting to be pretty annoying. It can be as bad as someone you've never met saying "Give me money" just because I'm white. Our figuring is that people have gotten used to giveaways, but PC doesn't work that way. It just seems rude to me.

Now I'm at this internet cafe in Bo called Mars. This place is so expensive. I'll try to upload some pictures to my facebook.