Rainy Season

Responding to comments:

Mom: I love you, thanks for commenting.

Christy: Thanks for sharing your opinion on the Peanut butter and tomato Sandwiches. You are wrong, but I don’t mind. (smile and laugh)

Official blog entry:

First of all, I would like to wish my Father a very Happy Birthday. I love you Dad!

The other day in the office, we talked about people who have influenced your life, and each person got tell about one or two people who really changed their lives. One person named a former boss who taught him a lot of things that have helped him, another person said his parents, and then one of the people said Fida (the organization that they work for here with Jay and Milka) After that idea was given, a couple others agreed. (I thought that was kind of cool) When it was time for me to share, I got to brag about my mom and dad for a little while, and I told about John Senechal who ran the Youth Center in Cando where I hung out all the time.

It’s rainy season. Up to this point, it has mostly rained for short periods of time every day, but most of the day has been filled with lots of heat and humidity. The last three days it has really rained a LOT. The last three mornings I have woken up to find it is raining. I have to drive the Toyota to the school because I do not feel like I am talented enough to drive the motorbike and hold an umbrella at the same time (though many people here do). Each day it has rained all morning and usually stopped around noon. Last night, I was up until 11:30 reading, and I heard it start to rain. to the best of my knowledge, it rained from then until 11:30 this morning without stopping. The raining fluctuates between a gentle rain to a strong downpour back to gentle raining. (that makes me wonder, “what makes it rain hard sometimes and not other times?” I doubt they have the answer on How Stuff Works and if they do, I don’t know where I would look.

My class at the school is down to have I have decided to call in my journal, “the faithful five” five students at the school who have come almost every single day. (the other ones sometimes come and sometimes don’t) One of my students said that in the city people are lazy on rainy days like this and they don’t do anything, but out on the farms they go out to work in the field when it rains.

I just finished teaching today, and we all had a lot of fun. I began with some sentences that had some errors in them, and I asked them to help me fix them. They would offer some ideas, and I would get two or three ideas of what would work, and then I would ask them which one they thought was correct. I tried my best not to grin too much at some of their sentences, and it was all very fun. Sometimes two of them would be correct, other times just one of them, and sometimes none of them. When I finished letting them think about the sentences I would go through and show them how to correct each sentence.

Then we got off of that and someone asked how to ask if someone is going to come back to visit you. I gave them all opportunities to answer and I wrote those answers on the board. Then I asked them if they thought the answers were correct. Together we went through and corrected the sentences.

When I thought they had the idea down, I asked them to ask each other if they were going to come back to visit and when.

We concluded class by using the same format of writing things on the board and correcting sentences asking a person to join them for supper. (a common question around here… if someone is eating lunch at the office and I come to use the computer they ask me to eat with them… so I decided to help them ask that question correctly.

Oh, and when we were making corrections, two times students remembered something I said and used it to find the correct answer. (One from something I said yesterday, and the other from the very first time I corrected her paper.) That felt real good. (huge smile)

-Luke