Patience Is A Virtue

So I said I would comment on my second day at Pendla, so here it goes.

We arrived the second day and Amy and I were hoping to meet our actual teacher. We hadn't really planned any lesson because we wanted to observe the actual teacher to see what level the kids were at and how she taught. Turns out our teacher was ill again. I just say ill, cuz that's what they say down here...British influence. We went back to the teacher we had the previous day. We kinda found out there was a time table so the teacher switches rooms about every 30 minutes and teaches different subjects. We moved to another classroom and two of our peers taught a english lesson to the students about adjectives. They did pretty well and it seemed like the students really caught on. They were 4th grade, I believe, I'm not sure how that compares in the U.S. They sure liked to copy each other and us though instead of coming up with new adjectives, I hope they understood it all.

Next we switched classrooms, but we weren't really informed on what class was coming next. The teacher said technology which was what Amy and I were teaching. We told the teacher we really hadn't prepared anything and we just wanted to sit back and watch her, but she said she hadn't prepared anything either! So basically we had to play it by hear and teach a lesson out of the book. We ended up teaching on Structures, which was really easy and I really wasn't mad about teaching, but I was quite frusterated that the teacher didn't have anything prepared. We didn't have much communication the previous day and I just couldn't believe she didn't have a back up plan. The lesson was fine though, I think the students got it. We started off by drawing picture of general structures on the chalkboard. Then we taught them about natural and mad-made structure and had them draw their own. It took them sooooooo long to begin drawing! They all have to get out their rulers and draw lines and then they write their name and the date and structures. Then they have to sharpen their pencils and then they talk for a while in Xhosa. Even after we brainstorms ideas for them to draw they still sit there a while. Man, that took a lot of patience! After this class they had their break and all went out into the yard. All of the little kids, mostly 1st and 2nd graders surround us and grab our hands. I just had a pack of little kids around me. They love to hold our hands and arms and look at our white skin. We can't really communicate with them though because they are just learning english and don't understand us yet. I hear that the little ones are really fasinated with the guy's arm hair and they'll rub their faces on it and pull it. I walked around with two little girls holding on to my hands and then ran into older girls who were talking to me and asking me to sing. They taught me some words in Xhosa and Afrikans and told me they liked to listen to Beyonce.

After recess, we went back to the classrooms and ended up teaching more technology lessons. I became really frusterated because the teacher would just sit in the back of the classroom. I don't even think she was preparing for class. I few classes too, if a kid was misbehaving she pulled out a switch and hit them on the hands with it. That made me real uncomfortable. The principle todl us they weren't supposed to do that, but she's a new teacher so I don't know if she got the memo. The car ride on the way home a lot of us expressed our frusteration. Some teachers just let hte students sit in the classroom and didn't teach for a whole hour. Many times the students were left unattended also. It's not all that bad though, some teachers did a really good job.

Nothing much else happened this week, we just had classes as normal. I'm learning a lot about SA politics.

I thought I'd share with you my grocery bill too. It's amazing how cheap stuff is! I'll tell you it in Rand but about 10 Rand equals 1 buck, so move the decimal over one.

Bag of apples-16.99
1 kg bag of carrots-7.99
Two chicken breasts-19.99
Can of tuna-8.99
3 bananas- 2.27
White grapes- 9.99

Pretty cheap!

That's all for now! Have a great weekend!