Instead of going straight to our schools this morning we went to Mwanje Primary School to award the students in standard 7 with new book bags for moving forward to standard 8 and we are giving the 11 standard 8 students new book bags too for getting chosen for secondary school.
When we gave the standard 7 class theirs we were in their classroom and they started singing for us while we passed them out; a lot of them seemed so happy and I was just so glad to be there. One boy in particular that I really wanted to meet was this boy named Gift; he was the most enthusiastic he would not stop dancing, I just loved him! He was real nice too when I spoke to him later. 
The real ceremony was outside for the 11 students. We each got to give a book bag to one of the students; I chose to give my book bag to one of the girls because out of the 11 students only 2 were girls so I was honored to give it to her. I didn’t get a chance to speak to her but I wish her a lot of luck in her studies and hopefully she will make it to the university. The dancing and singing done in our honor was great! I felt real important sitting in those chairs in front of the school. One thing that was real cool after all the speeches was that they gave us a gift which was a map of Malawi made in tiny, tiny beads glued to a frame which was all hand done by one of the teachers. After signing the visitors’ book and meeting some of the teachers all the kids in the courtyard just started this cool beat with a drum and singing and dancing. I saw people from our group in the crowd dancing with them so I went out there too. These three little girls from standard 7 came up to me and they were just too nice. They were trying to teach me the words of the song that basically kept repeating; I had it for a moment, but I don’t remember the words now. Then the oldest one was teaching me the foot movement they were doing it was so much fun I just loved the whole thing. Those three were my friends I just had to hug them goodbye; they were so nice. 
This is the teacher who made the beaded art work. 
I wasn’t ready to head back to school after that, I was still pumped up from all the excitement. 
When I did get back to the school I went straight to work with Dr. Barber in getting the classroom ready for the teacher’s Literacy in Mother Tongue class. Today Alinane and I finished translating his book. So then I helped him use highlighter tape to highlight vocabulary words he would want to use. Then I went to talk to a bunch of different teachers and they got to ask me a bunch of questions like comparing schools in the United States and Malawi; it was really nice. The rest of our group also came over to see how our project was doing and some of them even chose to help some teachers with their books.
For dinner tonight we went to this restaurant called Tasty Bites. I had these really good things called samosas, but the rest of my meal wasn’t that great. I did get some really good chocolate cake though and the frosting was so different but much better from anything I tasted. I also learned that Tasty Bites was the place where our professors created the logo for our study abroad program which is kind of cool. 
No comments:
Post a Comment