October 21, 2008

It seems like forever since I last gave an update. Things are going pretty well. We're getting more and more acclimated, and we're learning how to handle things better. Since I've been in the school for a few weeks now I'm starting to know the kids a little better. I normally spend most of my time with the girls ages 5-12 outside of school, but I have to teach grades 1-6. The way things are here, age does not have any correlation to grade. There are some older kids still in elementary school and some kids who by age are way advanced. Some days it is so difficult to gain or keep control of the class. They scream, move around, fight, etc. all the time. Today we had finals for half of the classes. So many kids were yelling out answers, right or wrong. Other kids refused to take the exam. Anyone who fails gets a retake, so those kids don't really get punished for refusing. Things like that make it frustrating to teach sometimes. It seems like I'm unable to keep things together. It just makes it that more important to rely on God to handle things. Even when I think things are not going smoothly, He shows me that everything is fine. For example, the other volunteer & I didn't think the kids learned much, but many of them did know a lot of the information we taught. Sometimes you could clearly tell they made things up, but other times you could see the effort they put forth. That makes things worthwhile.