The
monks once again greet us with their morning band practice. The staple
breakfast of 2 boiled eggs and a banana is ready at 7:30 and we are off to the
vans by 8:30. As the sun starts rising in the sky, the nice 70° weather turns
to a toasty 80°, and it continues to be super humid, especially for a girl from
Utah. As we hike up the hill to the school, everything begins to stick. No
matter what you do, the humidity glues your clothes to your body and coats you
in a nice layer of wet. We walk into the school yard and everyone is covered in
sweat and trying to catch their breath. It's only 10:00.
People
get into their committees to begin working. It is the first day of English camp
and the education committee is trying to figure things out. The night before at
the team meeting the teachers and helpers for the next day were announced. I
was announced as a helper so I go with the other teachers and helpers to where
the education committee has called a meeting. The job of the helpers is to lead
the children from classroom to classroom and to help the teachers with their
English lessons. The English camp begins as the other committees get to work.
In my classroom the children are learning words like mountain, stream, river,
sky, clouds and sun. All of the children are eager to learn and repeat
everything the teacher says. As she points to a tree and says tree they try
their best to repeat the word just her.
At the
other stations the kids play with a soccer ball to learn about passing,
throwing, kicking, bouncing, and scoring goals with the ball. They are shy at
first but as the game progresses, they laugh and all start chasing after the
ball. They start to catch on to the English and use the words that they just
learned. We finish going through 6 different stations and we gather all the
children in the biggest class room which is in the second building. It's
interesting to see how eager these kids are
to learn. They look excitedly at the teachers and are happy with any
lesson that is prepared for them. For these first few days, whenever we pass a
classroom, the kids all shout "Hi" excitedly and wave at us.
After
lunch ends, I go into the vocational room upstairs to get an update on what’s
been going on in the sewing room. All of the women had shown up to sew but we
didn't have any machines to sew on. Nabin, our in country coordinator, had
ordered the machines but they hadn't arrived at the school yet. In the mean time we cleared out the classroom
that would be used for the machines and had the women cut out fabric from
patterns. The rest of the vocational committee was working on organizing cloth
and supplies, along with cutting towels for the reusable pads that we were
going to sew.
Clearing
out the classroom was no easy task. It was full of garbage and dirt. There were
a few cabinets, some broken desks, bamboo poles, baskets and piles of dirt
covering the entire room. There was also metal framing going across the middle
of the room splitting it two parts. After clearing everything out of the room
we used some of the tin roofing and wire to make a wall so that we could have a
sewing room and another class room.
Suddenly
its 4:30 and it’s time to clean up so that we can leave. Everyone is tired but
we're all in a good mood since we were able to do so much on the first day. As
soon as Mckennah and I walk into our room, we collapse on the bed until dinner.
After we all finish dinner around 9 o'clock everyone heads to the roof. Its
time for our team meeting and we talk about the ongoing projects as well as
what is going on the next day. The meeting ends and day 3 comes to an end as we
all shuffle off the roof and into our beds.
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