done with the first week of classes.

it literally took me a total of 30 minutes to load this page so i will write here instead of emailing anyone back.

we just finished our first full week of classes. let me explain how it all worked really quickly. "Teach Inn" is a dormitory that volunteers that teach english stay in for 10 dollars a night, and the money from each night is divided between the community (five to the community) and five to the maintenance of the dorm itself (the Teach Inn). there are 11 beds but it is rarely full of volunteers because its so remote and far from civilization and because it literally just started. it was started by some British businessmen who wanted to experiment parnering a nonprofit with a business so that it could help create jobs for the community and stimulate the local economy (e.g. we have a day caretaker and a night guard, who were given their jobs by the mere existence of teach inn). now, it was built adjacent to a primary school, where the volunteers were to teach. since there have been about 6 teachers at a time, they have taught at 2 or 3 to a classroom (so as to maximize the amount of classes everyone gets to teach in, and to help since most of us are teaching for the first time and don't know the local language). in our case, there are 8 volunteers, and if we were to all teach at that primary, we'd literally only have about 4 hours each of teaching per week, which is a waste of our capabilities and presence.

furthermore, channel four in Britain, one of the four non-cable channels taht everyone gets, is going a 4-show special on Teach Inn that it has already filmed in March and April, and will air hopefully thsi september. for obvious reasons, they expect the volunteers at teach in to be at capacity after the show airs. (we MUST somehow get a hold, a videotape or get it on pay per view, of this series, since it is right where i am right now!)

SO, there are 8 of us at the moment, and we thought it necessary to expand to a nearby primary school so that we can anticipate the influx of volunteers after september, and that teach new volunteer can be accomodated by a classroom when they get here. so Georgie (my teaching partner), me, Cliondha and Joe (the american joe that is identical to Wayne Rooney of manchester united, so all the kids call him ROONEY), have been the four going to the new primary school. we went on tuesday and met with the head mistress, Joy, who was so happy to hear we'd want to teach there. almost half her school has fled to teach inn's first primary school because of word spreading about our presence there! so it'll be nice to get her students back. she was very welcoming, but it does require a lot of politics to convince them we are coming to help them. (you see, being a teacher in uganda is a very undesirable job, and it is so incredibly weird to them that we want to teach there and not get paid). anyway, joy and the p1 teacher Annah gave us lunch and brought meat, and meat is only used on very special occasions here, so we knew that they felt happy we had come.

at the new school, we are the first white people that most of the kids (and even the teachers) have ever seen. earlier this week, we met a local 80 year old woman from the village we work in that had never seen a white person in her life. we were the first whites she had EVER SEEN. it is very very very very very weird to watch people's initial reactions to you when you know this. the kids swear we are a different species. and everyoen constantly asks us what we eat, i dont know if they think we eat cardboard or something but it is so fascinating to them.

the walk to the new primary school is absolutely unbelievable, and no words could do it justice. its the best walk to 'work' i'l ever have in my life! its about 45 minutes up and down rolling hills of banana trees and cows and goats and all sorts of different crops (a staple crop here is matooke, it is good, a bit bland however).

we've agreed to teach on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at the new school, as the four of us are teaching at the first primary school on Mondays and Fridays. So, Georgie and i are teaching p1 (which encompasses the nursery and preschool age babies), p5 (about 12-10 years old) and p6.
they have learned english horribly, because they just memorize entire phrases and have no idea what the individual words are or mean. for instance, we walk in and say "good morning how are you" and the kids will say "iamfinethankyoumadamhowareyou?" like its one monotone word. the FUNNIEST of everything is when the head mistress tells them "please sit down" they say "iamsittingdown". HAHA. is that really necessary?

anyway, teaching the p1 babies is cute, we literally can only draw with them and sing alphabet and other songs. they are just too young. then p5 and p6 are farther along, but still have much trouble constructing sentences. we tried to get them to write using different adjectives, and the assignment was to write things like "I am tall, I am smart" etc. People are all over the place with their levels within the class. some kids would write things like "I am in Ugandan" ~ totally wrong ~ and another wrote "Suzy is the tallest woman in the class. Suzy is the cleverest woman in the class" which is very advanced.

anyway, we are enjoying teaching and the kids just adore playing with us as we bring them soccer balls, etc. they dont have any toys and they use plastic pags tied together with rubber bands for their soccer balls. they are very poor and this can get frustrating when walking on the streets of kabale, when they say "Hi how are you, give me money." You just can't, because then they and their 50 friends will follow you everywhere.

anyway, we love the new school and are excited for the next two weeks. the kids are so cute, particularly because their names are SOOOO strange. i dont know if i'd told you this before, but the kids have both a rukiga name and an english name. but since their parents dont know english, they generally pick an english word that sounds cool but has a very strange meaning. here are some of the best LITERALLY real first names of children in my classes:
Evidence, Witness, King, Adolescent, Active, Desire, Obvious, Sunday Talent, Friday Witness, god there are so many more. I have yet to meat the child called 'Task Force' but apparently he exists. That one is by far the funniest. :)

must go to a meeting, but there's teach inn for ya! now you have an idea of what i'm up to at school!
love,
suz