Saturday afternoon I got a chance to go back to the farm. As
always it was a pleasure to spend time with the boys there. We played
volleyball, talked about some of the contrasts between Uganda and America, and
ate a ton of fresh maize and pineapple. Some of their questions were a bit off
the wall and made our eyes get big. Marriage is always such an interesting
conversation! But, we also understood that these were innocent questions that
they are genuinely curious about and we are their peers so who better to ask
than us?
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| At the farm |
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| After church |
Sunday we went to church in the village. Compared to the
churches we visited in Fort Portal, I would say that this church was probably
the most culturally preserved. The others seemed like they had some western
influence, but Kaihura Full Gospel Church was definitely a cultural experience.
Similar to my church at home, the praise and worship was a big part of the
service, but it lasted much longer here. In total the service was about 3 hours
15 minutes and that’s just until we left, there were still people at church
continuing the service. We may not have wanted to admit it, but I think it was
a bit of a struggle for some of us to stay alert. Not because the service
wasn’t good, but just because it is not what we are used to.
At this point in the trip I had about a week left in Kaihura
and many mixed emotions. 2 months just seemed to fly by and I couldn’t believe
it. I got a chance to go to the children’s home and help them paint one of the
bedrooms. The children were so excited to have their space revamped. We used
bright fun colors that are perfect for children. I’m not much of an artist, but
painting a big wall wasn’t too bad!
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| Our neighboors |
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| Hong tutoring after school |
My students had also started taking their final exams. The
scores seemed to be better than their midterms, so I was happy about that. It
was slightly more nerve wrecking though because these scores help determine if
the students continue on to the next grade. Grading is not my favorite thing in
the world and is very time consuming, but it’s a great feeling to be grading
your final test. I noticed that a few of my students have a lot of trouble
reading. If I verbally read the questions for them, they understand and can
answer it, but if they have to read it they just give up and either leave it
blank or write nonsense. There’s just not enough time in the day, I would have
loved to have some one-on-one time with these students. It’s so hard to give
special attention to one student during class when you have 18 other students
waiting to be taught as well. It’s also unfortunate that copying is such a
frequently used method. In their defense though, it takes a lot of
self-discipline not to cheat because some of my students literally sit on top
of one another. Test papers sometimes overlap one another.
I really love my students! And even though they have started
driving me crazy (literallyJ),
I couldn’t imagine saying goodbye to them. It’s funny to think back to my first
day in the classroom when I was so timid and nervous that the teacher or
students wouldn’t like me. Now I couldn’t be more comfortable with them. I know
them each by name and have no problem calling them out when they are acting up.
I even know majority of my students by their Ugandan and English names, safe to
say the Ugandan names took me longer to learn and even longer to correctly pronounce!
Ronald (my teacher) is such a great teacher. He is a strong male role model for
the students. He is both caring and stern with the students. Even though I
sometimes disagree, he assures me that I am a good teacher. I can’t lie,
sometimes it’s quite nice to hear that.
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| My P.3 Class |
Until Next Time,
*Nicole
*Nicole
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