Greetings to Everyone back home!
Today is Saturday so we have a few minutes to get to our e-mails!
I have completed teaching six days of class. This is not more than a half of quarter of work, if a student would be attending high school in the states, taking English one period a day. Class is 5.5 hrs. per day. As far as English is concerned, the students are working hard. The vocabulary is difficult enough, but when you try to teach poetry and similes and metaphors, that is another extra layer of difficulty for them.
Another student was added to my class, so now I have nine students. I duplicated 10 copies of everything before I came, so I was prepared for her. I have only sisters in my class this year; there are no girls from the Hostel in the class.
As an English assignment, I had the students write a letter to either Sister Jane or to Sister Jenada. In looking over the letters I noticed that each one of them talked about the subjects they were taking in school and they each indicated that math was their most difficult subject. Since we have a math teacher right here in our midst, I asked Sister Barbara if she would be willing to help. She immediately said yes. The sisters had one of their Form I math books and one Form IV books with them. With those books and with the materials Sister Barbara found on the internet regarding the Tanzanian National Exams in math, she was able to plan some lessons to assess the skills and needs of the sister in the English class.
For two days this week Sister Barbara taught them concepts from the Form I books. Everyone wanted to attend that class. Even the students in Form IV told me that they did not feel confident of the the math concepts in Form I.
Today is Saturday. Sister Barbara said that she would be happy to work with the students with concepts from the Form IV book if anyone was interested. Three students out of nine were eager for this opportunity, so this morning she is having class.
While she is doing that I volunteered to wash the floor in our bedroom, which is totally covered with fine red dirt from the path we take several times a day from the Hostel to the chapel, dining room, etc. Washing the floor here is quite different from how we do it at home. The floor is cement, so you pour soapy cold water on the floor, using a scraper with a long handle, like we use on windows, and drag the water out of the room into the drain outside. Then you fill the bucket with cold water and rinse the floor.
Some of you know that at the Dollar Store I found and bought a small dry erase board for each student to use. (They are like the "magic slates" we used as children.) I thought that we would need to use two rooms to teach and only one rooms has a board. As it turns out, we are using the same classroom, but at different times. However, the dry erase boards have come in very handy. Sister Barbara asks the students to do a math problem on the board. When they are finished, they hold up their board and she can immediately see if they have done the problem correctly.
In English class I taught the students how to write a thank you letter and how to write a letter of invitation. (The national test usually asks them to write one or the other.) After we composed a letter of invitation together, inviting people to a final vow ceremony on August 15th, they each had to make their own invitation about another event, graduation, a wedding, etc.. Each student used her dry erase board to prepare her invitation. Then we put them on display so everyone in class could read the invitations of the other students.
Sister Barbara is also working on English with a few sisters individually. Now that retreat is over, she hopes to have a small class of sisters who want to learn English, but who don't have to worry about taking a national exam.
Every day in English class I spend about some time on "conversation." Each day they have various topics to talk about, eg. What kinds of books I like to read, What kind of music do I like to listen to, What is my favorite Bible story, What is my favorite family celebration memory, etc. Yesterday I told them that conversation would be held at 2:00 p.m. up at the Regional House. They were really curious as to what would be happening.
When they came I told them that we were going to talk about our favorite colors and why we liked them. We did this while dying eggs. They had never seen this before and really seemed to like it. Sister Barbara help too. Sister Elice came in to see the project and in her excitement began speaking to them rapidly in Swahili. They quickly reminded here to speak in English because it was conversation time. The chickens here lay only brown eggs, so the eggs had a different color than we are used to seeing when we dye white eggs for Easter.
This week I cooked supper two nights in a row. Since most of the sisters were on retreat, only Sister Elice, Barbara and myself were here at the Regional House for supper. The first night I made grilled cheese sandwiches and soup. Sister Elice had never had grilled cheese; she like it very much. The soup was actually a package of dried Knorr beef broth. I diced up a few carrots and onions and it was fine.
The next night the cook left one pot of hot rice for us and that was it. Again, I diced up some carrots, onions and some leftover meat. I beat three eggs well, added it to the other ingredients, including the rice and behold, fried rice. With a little sauce and some "chili sauce" ala African style, it was quite tasty. Right in the middle of frying the rice, the gas on the little three burner gas stove gave out. Sister Elice started an ancient tiny kerosene one burner stove and I finished frying the rice. She called Brother Michael over to install a new gas tank for the kitchen stove. It's a good thing that I like camping and have had experience. It is also a very good thing that the Salvatorian fathers and brothers live next door.
The sisters, priests and brothers who made retreat all seemed to like it very much. The retreat director was a Precious Blood priest from Dar es Salaam. Since retreat ended last night, today is filled with many departures.
This year we brought some games for the girls in the Hostel. (There are about 10 high school age girls who board in the Hostel. It is the same building where we sleep and have our classroom. After supper we played some card games and a dice game with them. They really seem to enjoy it. I also brought them a frisbee, which they love.
We are trying every possible means available to us to send Sister Patrice photos to use on the blog, but so far we have had no luck. Today may be our lucky day. Brother Immanuel, the computer teacher here, is helping us!
Lunch is ready, so I have to go! That's all for now.
Please know that we are very conscious of the fact that today is Jubilee Day in Milwaukee. Our prayers go heaven ward for the Jubilarians and for all of you.
love,
Sister Virginia
