School Days

Today was a great day. We started out by going to the schools and teaching in our classes. Today I taught my lesson on the human heart. I was a little bit apprehensive because of the whole volcano thing, but it actually went really well. They were SO interested in what we were teaching them, and they were all participating. It was such a relief that they caught on and were actually excited to learn about it. We taught them how the heart pumps, about the veins and arteries and then how blood travels through your heart. Then, we had them all take their pulse and we listed them all on the board and calculated how many beats per minute their hearts were beating. They loved that! Then I had them run in place for 30ish seconds and had them take their heart rate right after they were done. They loved to get out of their chairs and move around. It was so fun to see them engaged and learning. It gave me hope for my future lessons!

Both of these pictures are of the kids who are in our 4th grade class. They are so cute!

The kids LOVE to sing. They love to sing for us, and they love to have us sing with them. It is so cute. So, Anne Marie and I decided that it would be fun to teach them a couple of primary songs. So, we taught them “Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree” and “Once there was a snowman”. Before we taught them the snowman song, we had to teach them what a snowman was. It was funny. They absolutely loved learning the songs and caught on so fast. It was awesome. They sing popcorn like this: “Pop pop popping on the apricot tree” instead of “popcorn popping on the apricot tree”.

Then they taught us how to sing one of their songs, and they loved that we learned and sang it for them with out them singing. It was so sweet. It is so fun to sing with them because they all have actions and clapping and they sing so loud. It is so fun. Even all their games have songs that go with them. They love when we will play with them and try to learn their songs. They think it is hilarious and spend most of the time laughing at the way we say things, or when we don’t know how to play. It is super cute. I hope they stay interested in what we are teaching. It just makes things so much easier!

We also taught our AIDS class again today. This time we were working with girls. It seemed to me that they caught on so much faster. They seemed to understand what we were saying, and also they just had a stronger knowledge of the disease. I was so glad that they had the understanding that they did, but I almost wish it would have been opposite. Since almost all of the girls we interviewed also believed that boyfriends and husbands had the right to sex even if the girlfriend or wife didn't want it, their knowledge of the disease doesn't really do much for them. However, if the men had a stronger knowledge of it, they have more power to change and actually make a difference in the rates of AIDS, especially because it is so much easier for women to transmit AIDS to women than it is for women to transmit it to men. It is just good that at least they understand about it. They were a very bright group, it is just so sad to see how much they lack self esteem. They are all beautiful, smart, intelligent women, and yet, they have almost no say about what goes on in their lives. It is very sad, and would be a very hard life to live.