Teaching

Today was our first day of teaching. I think it went pretty well for most all of us. We all came back with interesting stories about our classroom experiences. Now that our first time is out the way, I feel the rest of our days teaching will only get better. After a wonderful pizza from Mama Tonny for lunch, we practiced soccer trying to enhance our skills for the game on Sunday (Wazungu vs. Tanzanians). Edward has the great advice that if we confuse the other team enough, we can win! We went back to the secondary school after practice to continue mixing concrete. After 70 buckets of sand were filled and carried, and plenty of cement had been mixed, we were proud to say that we no longer have baby hands. After a while, some of us ventured with girls into their world. They were excited to show us their dorms and practice their English with us. We convinced them to teach us all a Swahili song and we, in turn, taught them an American one. We were all laughing, clapping, and dancing with each other. We truly became one with them. We finally came back to the mission house where Michael played instruments with some boys and Ashleigh and Suzanne taught some girls hopscotch, ring around the rosy, follow the leader, and the chicken dance. It was a lot of fun to watch of course we took a lot of picha picha! Over dinner, we closed the night with encouragement from Edward to continue to experience the life of the whole Pommerini community. As we close out the day, I feel that the days to come will bring an understanding of a culture and people we could never get without being here.