Tuesday, August 17, 2010

First day of school!

Tuesday, August 17, 2010
10:36pm

The first day of school was a success! It was only a half day so school went from 8am until 12pm. Sixteen of my twenty students showed up and I just found out another girl will be here at the end of next week when she returns to the country. I have students from 5 continents and many countries including the U.S., Rwanda, Ghana, Belgium, South Korea, Australia, South Africa, and more!
We started the day with a meeting of the whole school, and I found all my first grade friends and we headed down to our room. Overall it was a great day going through procedures, playing get to know you games, and singing songs. It is a really great class! During morning prayer I asked for prayer requests from students, which were so precious. We prayed for one girl’s baby brother who has been crying a lot at night and keeping her mom up at night, another girl’s grandma, and several of the students wanted us to pray that we would have a good day at school and obey the teacher.

All in all, the students were very well behaved and we had a really great time! Tomorrow will be my first full day of teaching in my own classroom, so that should be exciting.

On Sunday I went with my roommate Emily to the Mother Theresa Orphanage in Kigali. It was beautiful, fun, and heartbreaking all in one. I had never actually been to an orphanage and it was an awesome experience. I would say there were about 50 children ranging in ages 2-4 and maybe ten younger than that. Mostly the kids were just excited we were there and they wanted to be held and played with. I plan on going back on Sundays whenever I can.

Mostly, I spend a lot of time at school, working in my classroom and doing lots of planning. Today I came home and took a long nap, and went back to school for a long time!

The best time on weekdays for me to skype is between 4pm and 9pm my time so between 10am and 3pm in Michigan! Please e-mail me and we can set something up!

Also… since I’ve been here I’ve tried sheep and goat!

Okay, it is getting late so I need to get to bed! I will try to put up some pictures this weekend

Love, hugs, and happy first days,
Kerry

3 comments:

  1. Kerry,

    Your 1ST FULL DAY!

    I am so happy for you. I know you loved watching the students play at recess today. I'm also sure they came back from recess with so much energy. Their fruit today was a banana that could be why. Or it's because they are wonderful children with a great 1st grade teacher. Hopefully by now you have already taken a well deserved nap. You probably are going to set up for tomorrows class because you're amazing.
    Keep up the hard work and enjoy every second.

    I miss you,

    Ryan

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  2. We're eager to see photos! The house, the classroom, whatever. Can you show the kids DVDs? Do you have enough stuff?

    love,
    Aunt Phyllis

    ReplyDelete
  3. Let's skype again! I bet Africa is a little more exciting than Glo Golf. I miss you but I hope you're having lots of fun.
    I love you!
    Kelsey (not Merz)

    ReplyDelete