Day 2: Erica Miller

Day 2 With Erica Miller
Thursday May 23, 2013.

Our day started off with a warm breakfast of French toast, peanut butter, bananas, and plum jelly, before we went off to Bulobi to start our teaching. When we got to the school, it was amazing to see the classrooms with the benches and big chalkboard. It might sound silly, but when you see things that were only in your imagination come to life, it is amazing. We only started off with nine girls, but in time, forty-five girls showed up. The girls were very quiet at first but I believe that it was because of their culture and the way they have learned how to do things. With all of our lessons, we could see the level the students were on and what we need to do to help them. We interacted a lot with the girls, which they are not used to, but you can see the happiness in their faces. They truly do appreciate their education and the help that we were providing them. Towards the end of the teaching day, we had an opportunity to play games with our classes. 

We were teaching the girls games that we would play like "Duck, Duck, Goose" or "Red light, Green light", but the girls were also teaching us how to play games that they would usually play to. It was fun learning their games because they are not the typical games you would think of. They were more like singing games not like we were having a contest but we were in a circle singing a song, or singing and following what one of the girls were doing. It was fun being able to see the girls opening up to us and laughing and just having a great time. When the school day was over, you kind of just realized the importance education is to these girls and what we are doing for them. The majority of them were walking barefoot to school while some of them were traveling two hours from mountains just to get to school. Just being there for all the students and helping them, is a great satisfaction. Our first day went wonderfully, although it was not what we imagined. 

When we got back to the house, we had guacamole and chapati for lunch. The guacamole was some of the best guacamole most of us have ever had. After we were done we have decided to go to the market which is a ten minute taxi ride. We walked to the middle of the village which is called “the center” to catch a taxi. The taxi drivers can fit so many people into such a small space. The ride was very bumpy and scary, but it was the experience that we were all able to have. At the market it was raining and very muddy. We had a lot of the people staring at us, but you have to think that it is going to happen because we are not common. For a lot of us we imagined a lot of different clothes, scarves, and maybe traditional things at the market, but unfortunately there was a lot of food and other things that were not really for souvenirs. Taking the taxi back home was the interesting part. 

We had the taxi drivers fighting over us, who was going to take us back to the house. When we finally got into one of the taxis, we were crammed in there. It was very bumpy and rough. The mud from the rain also made it slippery, so at one point the taxi slide and got stuck. Some of us stayed in the taxi and some of us got out. The two guys, Ricky and Tier, were helping them push the taxi and it finally was not stuck any more. Three of us decided that we were not going back in the taxi and the rest of them stayed. They actually ended up getting out of the taxi and the nearest village because they believed it was the village we were staying at, but it wasn't  We walked about one mile before getting back to the house. The walk was not bad for some of us because we were getting to see all of the wild life and the surrounding environment. 

Through our day, we learned a lot about the kids and life around the village. We all walked into this having an idea of what it would be like, but at the end of our day it is more than what we expected. The girls were the highlight and being able to just  interact with them and the others in the village was wonderful. In one day we have learned a lot about them and things to expect for upcoming days so I would think our day was very accomplishing and better than what we expected.