Placement goes on...

Wow, it has been a busy few weeks and i’m so grateful for some time this weekend just to relax!! I am now 5 weeks into my placement at the pre-school. Middle Class certainly keep me busy! We have about 30 4-5 year olds in our class and with limited space it can certainly be challenging. Staff shortages have been an issue these past few weeks and i have been given the task of teaching the children numbers and sounds from the alphabet. It’s certainly a challenge to get all the children to listen to me and make learning fun! (major respect to all teachers that manage it) However ‘teacher Tee’ has managed to master song time! I spend about 30mins a day teaching the kids Jesus your my super hero, our God is great big God and other HBC songs! The winner however has to be the little green frog song, thank you to my cousin for teaching me that many years ago!!! In class the kids have been learning about how they are Gods children and are specially created by God, they have also been praying for their needs and for each other. It’s beautiful to see a 4 year old stand up and pray for their sick parents or school fees!

My afternoons are spent preparing books for class, writing out letters and number for the kids to copy- man I wish we had a photo copier!! Haha! 

The head teacher of pre-school has pretty much adopted me and Becca as her twins, Mama Jeanine is an amazing lady! She works so hard in the pre-school and caring for her family, she has so much wisdom and faith I just love her!!! She has also blessed me with dinner 3 times now, and boy does she make some good chips!! J

Since I last wrote we have seen some visitor to the base, Kirsty joined me at half term which was great! I r4eally hope she enjoyed seeing life as I know it and working in the pre-school. It was really eye-opening to me to see how different my life is now to what it was! While she was here some of the girls celebrated valentine’s day with a meal in town which was r3eally good just to relax!

This past week our YFG co-ordinator from  England visited, it was great to see her and chat though our experiences so far! I was blessed by our spontaneous one to one and i’m sure i talked far to much! Haha! It was great to hear her wisdom and for her to be able to see and say how well we are all doing!

The next DTS have arrived and it been fun to hang out with them for a few days and watch them settle in to base life remembering how I was 6 months ago! We have also moved rooms in the last week due to the amount of on the new DTS so we now have A PROPER TOILET and a decent shower (yes it’s still cold) moving was an entertaining process I certainly now own far too much!

This week Ella who was last year YFG feb student returned to England for her debrief, I remember meeting her for the first time when she was 6 weeks into her placement (where i am now) and suddenly she’s finished! It’s crazy to think that’s going to be me before I know it! I’m certainly not ready to leave yet I still have so much I want to achieve and learn before that day comes right now the thought of having to leave this place is sad i have defiantly settled in and really love Uganda now, i just pray that when the day comes i will be ready to leave ( but hey i still have 6 months!)

Once again my blog post is scatty and unstructured (just like my brain) still I'm sure your get the picture!

Start of term!!!

well it's 4:30 on a friday afternoon, and i think i kind of understand that end of the week feeling tezchers get, i mean as a student 3:15 on friday was the hilight of my week but i really don't think that compares to the feeling teacher get!
Now don't get me wrong, i have had an incredible start to my placement but it has been hard work! the first week i spent my time helping clean and organise, i don't think i have ever seen so many disorganised boxes, there was stuff EVERYWHERE at the start of the week, but after mnay hours of sorting organising and cleaning the shelves were re-stacked the resources orderd and the place dust free!! the first thing that really hit me about how this is an afrian pre-school not in the UK was that the hand made resources and games are all stored on peices of old box or plates, there are nice cabinets and draws to store things in. You might be thinking durrrrr you are in Africa but sometimes i do forget that it's different here because i now see this as home, especially when i see games i had as a child or domino's that i can picture in a box at my gradparents house!!
Pre-school term started on monday this week (6th feb) a staff shortage meant that for this week both middle class (4yrs) and top class (5 years) were both in one class with one teacher are 2-3 helpers (thats me!!!) we had about 60 children and so i'm sure you cn imagine with the start of term hype it has been a crazy week! The program the pre-school uses is a Bible based sylabus, the day (well morning 8-1) consits of singing, leaning about the Bible, memory verse ( this week was psalm 119:89-90) learning manors (e.g. how to greet someone into your home) and education (alphabet, numbers etc) everyday the children also learn about the weather (all week it has been sunny!!) and the day of the week, date and month! During free time the children work on projects (this is what we would call classroom playing) and have domino's, puzzles and matching games which are all educational resources as well as being able to colour and draw.
This week i have also worked with smaller group (15-20 children) teaching them, on thursday we looked at numbers and the children had to count from 0-7 and then match the number and words. After we had learnt to numbers they then practiced writing, i found challenges with mixed abilities in my group and some difficlties in lauguage, although the children are learning english and are expcted to speak it not all understand me or speak it!! Today (friday) i worked with a group on the alphabet, one issue i found was that half way though learning some of the letter cards were missing!! At this age the children also have a short attention span, the different approach here in Africa meant that i had to try and engage the group for almost half an hour, this i have learnt is hard enough at the best of times but especially with a group of non-understanding misbehaved 4 year olds!!! They are certainly going to be a project!!
The cutest moment of my week has to be when 4 year old patience sat on my lap and fell asleep, bless the little girl she was curled up for almost an hour!!! The girls in true girly fashion have taken a liking to my mzungu hair and are constantly twisting an braiding it!!
I think thats about it for these weeks but i will leave you with some prayer points:
pre-school: language barriers
disapline with the children
staff in pre-school
preperation for the next phase of my placement (at amacet childrens home)
financial security and trusting God with my money!!
Good healt
Rain!!!! haha it's been far too hot lately! haha
oh and as a last point, we have been harvesting and shelling the maize that we planted the first week we were here! it's been amazing to see the whole process go through ( even if it is going to make posho YUCK)

Just a thought...

So i keep thinking of random quesrions about life, questions i don't have the answers to but i think about so i decided to share these THOUGHTS with you, you get them fresh out of my head which could explain if they don't make most sense, but i'd love to hear your views :)
so here;'s the first one :
So here's the thought, last week i met someone that i had heard about but never met. i didn't have that much infor about them but i knew that she was a christian. When i met her she was not what i had imagined. Why is it that we auomatically have a sterotype about what a chirstian is like, how many times have you met someone with bleached hair, pericings or tatoos and thought whoa you cannot be a chirstian!!! Even within oursleves there is an expectation that you will be plain and boring no wonder no body wants to join us!!! As 'good christians' we always preach about how it's wrong to sterotype and judge people, yet sometimes i feel thats all we ever do to ourselves. Why is it so much of a shock when you meet a chirstian chearleader or california girl? When you think about a typical christain girl are they middle hight with straight brown hair and green eyes not too pretty but not ugly in jeans and a hoody. Or do you see this tall beautiful girl dressed head to toe from top shop with hilghted hair waist length hair? In our imagination of people why do we always try and take the personality out of what it means to be a chirstian? Now i know many chirstians with dyed hair, the lastest clothes and independant styles, no 2 chirstains are the same so why do i continue to sterotype them? Personally i feel like it's the vibe with give off, it's what we expect when we walk into church and few people are trying to break out of that mold. Now i don't have any answers only questions but i think the more we conciously think about it the easier it will be to make a change our view and the views of others :)