Monday, February 9, 2009

Relief

I just got back from meeting with the safari tour group and I'm so relieved. They said that they can let me borrow a digital camera for the safari, then when I get back I can copy my photos to a CD and then give them the camera back. Now there's no rush to fix my camera because any safari I go on with them I'll always have a way to send pictures back to you guys. Also the tour group mentioned something I'm really interested in. They said we could go hunting with Bushmen. We'd go out with bows and hunt down something like an antelope or gazelle and then make a fire with sticks and eat it out in the wild. This is right up my alley, it's around 300 dollars which is cheap for a safari. I highly recommend the Bushmen Tours safari group to anyone going to Tanzania.
My first day at Juvy was pretty good, the children are all good people, though I have to keep an inventory of the supplies because sometimes the kids will swipe something so they can sell it to someone later. There's a woman from Denmark there who's teaching the kids, which is nice for helping me transition. But she also tends to resist using Swahili and expects a lot from the kids. She has good intentions because she wants to help them learn enough to be able to function in regular school once they're out of juvy, but at the same time she was teaching those kids for close to three hours and I really think those guys needed more time to go out and play because after a while they were getting a little stir crazy. I think when I'm alone with the kids I'll try to do more learning games, something where the kids will be having fun but still learning something. If anyone knows of some fun and easy learning games then let me know.

1 comment:

Leianea said...

I find with the kids I tutor that after an hour they're ready for me to leave, but I was at a young kids group thing on Sunday (Quest? I dunno is that a big UU thing?) and in the middle they just had everybody get up and do a rain dance and then even that like 30 seconds of movement kept them calm for the rest of the time. Otherwise it just depends what you're teaching them. Have them pass a ball around the room and when you catch it you get to/have to answer a question, or have them run to opposite sides of the room if they thing something is a preposition or a noun.