Sarah today said that the English language can be quite confusing because certain words sound very similar. She then struggled to differentiate the difference between angry, hungry, and ugly. In an American accent, they don’t sound very similar, but in an African/British accent, they do.
At one point in class, I had the ladies give me sentences while I typed them up onto a PowerPoint. After I typed one sentence, the ladies gasped in amazement and started chattering away. I had no idea what was going on, so I asked them to explain, and the ladies said they couldn’t believe how fast my fingers moved. I told them it was my special talent (joking). It’s funny how amazed they were, but it makes sense – I kind of doubt these women have ever used a computer in their life, so I’m sure my typing skills seem surreal to them.
My Tuesday morning session is strange – the boys who are supposed to come rarely do. They instead surprise me by coming on other days, which is fine. But poor Stone has picked up on this. He always shows up on Tuesday, but he doesn’t like being by himself (understandable), so he hides outside the gate and waits to see if other boys will show up. I caught him today hiding out there. He giggled and ran away, so I quietly tiptoed up to the gate and hid behind it. The next time he came around, he stuck his head through the opening and I jumped out and scared him. He started giggling his adorable little laugh and was convinced to come in to be tutored.
Then for my afternoon tutoring sessions, the two Barnabases were playing soccer and were a few minutes late. Rachel’s girls took turns going out to the field and yelling at them to come in. I didn’t mind – I understand that playing soccer is a lot more fun than trying to learn and spell English words, and I knew they would come soon. But Rachel’s girls just sat there and screamed, “Barna! Barna! Barn-a-bas!!!” This probably didn’t make them hurry up anymore. While I was waiting for them to come in, I wrote a short story about how a teacher named Miss Erika was so sad her students named Barnabas didn’t show up and chose to play football instead. I then had the younger Barnabas read it out loud when they showed up. It was very amusing for me to watch him realize that this story was about him, and he and the older Barnabas started laughing as soon as they made sure I wasn’t mad at them.
We played volleyball after that and I went for a quick run before dinner. On my way back from the run, Stone and Given’s father came up to me, shook my hand, and said, “I wanted to thank you for all the work you’re doing with my boys. They have progressed so much and I thank you so much.” That pretty much made my year.
Again, a very busy but productive day. There was such strange weather today. Last week was cold and chilly and felt like the cold season, but today was blazing hot all day except for a half an hour where the temperatures dropped dramatically and the clouds turned black. Not much rain, though, so I’m happy to say that the rainy season definitely seems to be over.
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