Working in Africa

THese pictures are of us all at Pysical Education (PE).  So this is what is happening. The orphanage is a few buildings in a community with dirt roads and on the side of a moutain. The orphanage is basically a school with a room for each class level. They have an early class which is all the young kids and they learn counting and ABC's. Then there is a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, classes. They have schedules each day and learn in each class. They stay in the same room and different teachers teach different things. They learn English, Math, Social Studies, Science, Creative Arts, and Pysical Education. So i haven't taught a class on my own yet but i have been sitting in on a few. I did teach the socail studies class today about Ranches in American. I also taught the little kids the Hockey Pokey song. Each class has about 5-6 children in it and they are the most well behaved, repectful, and eager to learn children i have ever met. The younger ones have about 12 kids in the class and they are SO loud. I stay in a house down the road and walk up each day to teach and see the children. I taught the children how to play baseball today and they pretty much made up their own rules. We had so much fun. The children are loving and SOOO glad you are here to help. They are not so clean all the time and if you think noses run at IPS you should come here. It is easy to remember most of the kids because they wear the same thing each day. I think it is funny and sad that they wear the most interesting shoes. One kid wears cleates (those soccor shoes) and fancy girl shoes to school, obvious donations. They call me Teacher Tara and they love us coming to help them or teach them. Also there are two girls here working on the project with me and they are for the UK and the other is from a tiny island between Ireland and England called Isle of Man. THe one from the UK aksed last week what she could for the orphanage and they said she could help build a library. SO when i came I helped to donate money and time to help to build this library. We are VERY excited about it and so are the children. HAPPY SAINT PATRICKS DAY (yest) to all the Irish. We celebrated by taking a taxi into town and eating at the coffee shop because they had an St. Patty's Day celebration which was just a buffet and paper shamrocks on the tables. But we had fun. So that is all for now...JODI i am doing fine...i know you wanted a seperate shout out so here it is. It is all so fun so far but hard to remember about the water as it is sooooo hot here and i want to drink GALLONS of water but it is expensive so i am getting very deyhdrated. The time is great and I will update you all soon and hopefully with pictures. Hope eveyone is doing well.