Day 6: Ricky Hawkes

Day 6 With Ricky 

So as you can tell so far, Africa has been pretty exciting. Each day, everyone had woken up excited and ready to go. This morning was not the case. From around 3 a.m. till morning, the cow next door was continuously mooing. Most of us didn't get much sleep, and were a little grumpy. It’d didn't take us long to switch gears and get excited for the day. Today was our first full day (8 a.m. – 4 p.m.), and it was the first day we were teaching the boys as well as the girls.Our first lesson at the school went really well. Katelyn, Danielle, Molly, and I taught the kids about the water cycle. We used the game Hangman to introduce the topics to the group and used white boards to explain the different steps. At the end of the lesson we taught them how to play 7-Up, which they loved.We came back to the guest house for lunch, which was a relief. As fun as the kids are, sometimes it’s nice to just get a break. Some of us used this time to take a short nap while others read and relaxed. Around 1:20 we started back up to the school for the afternoon classes.

                

When we got back to the school, the kids had a little more recess time left. Flannagh Lead them in a game of Simon Says, which they loved. For the afternoon class, we decided to have the groups play jeopardy to give them a review of what they already learned. It started out a little rocky, but the kids eventually started to catch on and it became a fun and engaging exercise. At the end of jeopardy we played Four Corners with them, a game where one person counts to ten and they have to choose one of 4 corners and run to it. The counter then picks that corner and the people there are out. The kids LOVED this game. It’s fun to see how excited they get about us playing with them. At the end of the day when we walked back to the guest house, not one person in our group had a free hand. Everyone was holding the hand of at least one of the students they taught today. They walked us back to the guest house, we said our goodbyes, and we all went inside to relax.

                

As we talked about our day, we all agreed that the boys are a great addition to the class.  Most were outgoing and funny and they all seemed excited to have us here. For the rest of the day we all hung out and got to know each other better by sharing stories. For dinner, we had pasta and meat, which is sort of a delicacy here. People made jokes about how they hoped it was the cow the kept us all up last night. After dinner we had our daily discussion questions, which help bring all of us a lot closer together. As the night wound down we went to sleep one by one with the same thing on our mind:

Please Don’t let the cow Moo all night.