I am a real teacher. EEEK!!

Saturday, August 21, 2010

12:00pm

The first week was a success!!
I am also pretty official because my picture is on the staff part of the school’s website: www.kicsrw.org. Thanks, Aunt Kathy, for letting us know! For those interested in what I eat every day, check out the school menu because I eat what the kids eat for lunch each day.

Everyone has been asking for picture… so here are a few….


This is my bedroom at my house! We got lucky and got the house with everything GREEN so it is perfect for me! They accidentally ordered us king sized beds so I sleep on about a quarter of my bed.


This is me and one of my roommates, Emily at the lake we went to for some orientation things the first week. It was beautiful and so was the drive! And, this is the place where I first tried goat.


It was also my first bus ride in Africa, where we went off the main roads into Kigali and onto unpaved roads with lots of potholes (kind of like Michigan! Haha).



Here I am in my first day of school outfit in my calendar corner of my classroom.

There is no carpet in this country, that I have seen, but last year in first grade they had this awesome blue shag carpet, so now I get it! The kids love it, although it is quite distracting because it is fun to play with. We spend a lot of time in this area, doing math meeting, reading stories, and singing songs. They LOVE singing and dancing so I’m glad I have so many children’s Cds on my computer (Thank you, Ingrid Schwab!)! So far their favorites are the chicken dance and the freeze.

My students are quite wonderful, but surprise: they act like a bunch of 6 year olds, so I am quite exhausted. We are getting into more of a routine and I’m pretty good at gauging enough time for everything. Eight hours is just a long day! We have about 25 minutes where the whole school has recess (chai break!), where I am on duty once a week. I have one or two 20 minute specials (P.E., Music, and Art) a day, except on Fridays, so those are really my only breaks. The kindergarteners and first graders eat lunch together first, and the teachers are the main supervisors at this point. Eventually Gerda (from the Netherlands) and I will take turns watching them at lunch, but until everyone is in the routine, we are both there.

Everybody here has such huge hearts!! I am so blessed to be surrounded by so many amazing people all the time. I have already made some great friends, especially my roommates, Emily and Kelly, and some of the other teachers. It is awesome because people are from nearby states (Micki and Doug are both from Indiana!) and then I have a friend named Hannah (second grade teacher) from England! I love it.

Last night I went over to a family’s house for dinner and we had HOT DOGS (with Heinz ketchup from Kenya!), potatoes, fruit salad and cupcakes. It was quite delicious. Tim Brubaker was the first person to contact me about this job, and he helped me set up my first interview with Trevor, the headmaster of KICS. Their family feels responsible for me being here, and had been praying for me for months and months. It is pretty awesome how God works, because I had been praying for this opportunity for so long and now here I am! Their family is so welcoming and Jessica is going to help out in my classroom (their son, Martin is a first grader), so I am grateful that I have them!

After dinner I watched a movie with some friends, fell asleep for part of it, then we sat around and one of our friends played guitar and we sang and hung out. It was comforting to me for the simple reason that I love that and it is so familiar to me-- just like home! God provides me with these types of friends in every stage of my life. What a blessing!

I will try to be more consistent about posting pictures and I’ll include some from school as soon as I take them.

Thanks for reading.

Love, peace, and delicious cupcakes,
Kerry