Cowergary

Another amazing week at ACJ, I must say Harrit and I kicked some major butt this week just having us two for teaching. It was circuit training this week, so yes that means right now I can barley move without pain. It was basically like boot camp for me. 4-5 classes a day of the plank, pushups, squats, crunches, crunch twist and squat jumps. Then of couse I opened my big mouth and told the kids in 3 weeks time they can challenge us to a competition in any of the activities they learned. Not thinking that it will not just be one class to challenge us but 4-5 everyday for 5 days. Yea I was really not thinking when I said that. They kids were great some of them really pushed themselves to do the exercise properly and do as many as they can. Then today every class just did not want to do them. But one day out of 5 not to bad. The grade 7’s were my favorite this week because they got so into it and they all behaved so well.

On Thursday I had to teach a grade 7 class by myself because Harrit had to do something. When I walked into the class and saw that it was the class that really missed behaved last time I had them I thought I was going to freak. When I was trying to get their attention there was a few boys throwing text books at each other and fighting. I was trying to get them to stop and as I got them to be quiet the teacher who has been helping us out all week and stepped in to help me. To my surprise it was the best well behaved class of the day. Also it was the most fun. I was proud to have all their attention and all of them were actually doing the exercises and doing them so well.

In the 3 weeks I have been here every week more teachers are starting to come with their classes and it makes such a difference because GVI does not plan to be at the school forever. We are there to help out and hopefully they will go back to teaching sports class at some point. So its good they see the lay outs we do what activities the kids like doing and can relate it to what they want to do.

One of my favorite days this week was we had a rainy day class again. So we played who wants to be a millionaire. The game has been going so well with the kids. But this time I ran it so I got to add a few things. I told the class where I was from and Harrit pointed it out on the globe. They were so interested in how long it took me to get here. My favorite quote was when Harrit was like “ This is where teacher Rhiannon lives & this is where we are. ( as she points to the globe) Do you see how close she lives to the North Pole, that’s why its so cold where she lives and why its so hot in South Africa.” I just started laughing because of course the kids believed it.  Then we moved onto the bonus 2 million rand question which was “ where was the last winter Olympics held” it was multiple choice so I said the options were a) London b) Vancouver c) Calgary. Then Harrit asked me clagary 3 times and I said yes it spelled how it sounds. Then I turned to see her write Calgary as “cowergary”. I laughed so hard and the children started laughing at me because I just could not stop laughing.

I am off to Cape Town this weekend. I will write more about my week another time,

Love & Rocket Ships