1st day @ Mburuku Primary!

This morning we woke up late because my alarm never went off! Just in time to make the bus to the home base at 6:30. After a quick breakfast, Brandon, Justin, & I made our way to Mburuku Primary for the first time! We had no idea what to expect. Getting out of the van, we had about 400 smiling faces watching our every move. The school consists of 2 open air buildings, consisting of 7 classrooms, an office, and a "teachers lounge". There is a large courtyard in the middle and 2 soccer fields beside the school. We first met with the principal...the language barrier made it a little confusing, but we decided that justin and I would be working with Standard (grade) 4 and Brandon with Standard 7. Since the schools are drawing towards their end next week for their winter break, the schedules are a little crazy. We waited for about an hour for the kids to finish their exams and were shown the lounge and introduced to some of the other teachers. We were told we would only be observing today and not teaching but after the kids were done with exams we were thrown right into the classroom...SCARY right?!?! haha. At first we had no idea what to do. We introduced ourselves ("Jina langu ni Katie na Justin") & asked them all of their names ("Jina lako nani?). After going around and hearing all of their names we decided to teach them how to play Heads Up Seven Up! Although they could not understand the game at all the first few times (they especially had problems not peaking lol), they slowly got a handle on it and really had a good time! Our curriculum for our English class today was to teach them how to tell and write time. We drew clocks on the board and taught them half past, quarter past, and quarter till the hour and they all picked up on it really fast! & were surprisingly good at writing in english as well! Since that was really our only lesson for the day we decided to draw pictures on the board and see if they could guess what they were in english...they had a lot of fun doing this and we even got them to draw some pictures on their own to see if we Muzungus (white people) could guess too!!! After teaching them the Hokey Pokey and letting them teach us a few of their dances and songs, we thought we were down with the class so we went back to the teachers lounge during the kids break time. The other teachers had made us Chupati and some chi tea which we graciously accepted. When all the kids were back in the classroom, we asked the other teachers what they were going to do next and they said they had nothing for them to do so they would just wait until their next exam at 12:30. Considering they dont ever have much of a schedule in Tanzania, this didnt really surprise us...but we didnt want to just sit back and do nothing when the kids could at least be having fun! So I decided to take Standard 4 out to the soccer fields for some game time! & we had a BLAST!!!! the kids can't get enough of us! Everywhere I went I had a child burrowed under each arm and holding every hand, arm and leg possible...and they couldn't stop touching my hair! They are all ADORABLE children and I can already tell its going to be so hard for us all to leave them in a few weeks : ( Justin and Brandon joined us out to play...Brandon being an African American is really funny here because no one thinks he is from America and they dont really understand why he speaks so differently than them. haha...but we all just give it a good laugh! After running around like crazy people playing soccer, all the kids taught us circle songs and dances and we had so much fun! I dont think we volunteers have ever been so hot and sweaty in our lives, but we were having some of the best times so we didnt even care : ) ... after we were done and went back to the school, we had to leave the children (after assuring them that we were coming back tomorrow) and go back to homebase for lunch! After a quick shower, lunch, and our daily Swahili lesson we met with Mama Thea and she taught us about culture and family structure in Bagamoyo. She also taught us how to carry the big bottles of water on our heads! How fun! After meeting with her we went to meet with a musical family for what was supposed to last only 30 minutes. They are a large family of 45 people who all live together and have travelled all over there world with their musical group performing for all kinds of people. They have tons of kids, all adorable, and we had a blast playing with them and taking pictures! After the family made us chi tea and the best peanuts ever that they had been cooking all day, we got to hear them perform on their personal-made instruments and they were amazing! They all played instruments and many of the kids sang and danced with them. It was truly a moment to remember for sure! They are coming to play for us again next Wednesday and we can't wait! After Mama Thea and Mama C had to drag us away after being there almost 2 hours, we came back to home base to eat dinner & then find me here, back in the small computer "cafe" down the old dirt road from our home! I will be posting again tomorrow because missing a day completely throws me off and I can't remember what I've done! So Kwaheri (goodbye)! & will post again soon! Asante Sana!

p.s. i fell out of my bunk bed last night when i was half asleep trying to get out to use the bathroom hahaha! so the hip isnt feeling so good today! <3