Still couldn’t figure out my internship teaching for next week because the other Chem teacher was administering the national exam all day. Tried to get the Scheme of Work (basically the teacher’s schedule for covering topics) but it wasn’t in the office where it is supposed to be. Jordon and Vero aren’t having much luck either. They are supposed to be teaching Form 2 Math and it turns out that there hasn’t been a teacher all year, the students have been trying to teach themselves. In fact the head of the dept is the only math teacher at the school. It’s crazy but it also means that when we teach for the 3 weeks, no matter how bad, it is still better than nothing. I don’t need the reassurance but it’ll probably help others gain more confidence.
Our teacher wanted us to walk around own for a little bit (~40 min) today to talk with people. Tim ended up getting a hair cut but it ended up shorter than he wanted. Most locals just shave their heads really short, even women or girls. All students at our school, including girls, must have short hair. I can mostly tell gender differences by clothing: girls have skirts or pants w/ a Muslim head wrap.
This afternoon we had a PCV come to observe the micro-teaching. My lesson went well and I mostly just have to relate the topic to things in real life better. I’m used to this for Earth Science but I really need to start recognizing analogies for Chemistry too. Finally got back to the Internet and was able to chat with my sister for awhile through Gmail. I enjoyed being able to get a little real time conversation in with her. Of course, it meant less updates for my blog but oh well.
The electricity here has been randomly going out at night and when it happened tonight, I put my headlamp on. One of the girls (Beatrice) used it to read a little as I was reading. She and the boys ended up helping me with some exercises in my Kiswahili book and I think they liked it. I need to try to do more of that with them; maybe they’ll be more open if I do. I have found that being shy puts me at a great disadvantage and I really need to push myself to communicate more.