Sunday, July 15, 2012

Solar Sytems and my Birthday


Teaching at Kechene school has been great lately! I am starting to get the hang of managing all the excited children…just in time for me to go home haha. The other day, I taught the older students about the solar system. They were really interested and slightly confused; I don’t think they knew that the earth is a planet moving around the sun and that there are other planets out there too. It was kind of cool to teach people that! After I taught the order of the planets and some information about them, I had the students get in groups for a fun (at least I hope) activity. Each person was a planet, and they had to order themselves from closest to the sun to farthest from the sun. After Asrat gave directions and told them to begin, they all started screaming and running around in their groups. It was one of the cutest things I have ever seen, and I really wish I could understand what they were saying (but they were speaking in Amharic). Anyway, it was a tough challenge but after about four minutes, we had a winner. The winning group was so happy that it made my day. Or maybe my week. And they learned something too!

            Along with my daily routine, I have had a lot of fun lately because it was my birthday! I woke up and was really excited because we had yogurt left in our fridge, and I knew it was a sign that my birthday would be wonderful! I went to school as usual, taught, and hung out with the kids. I tried to explain to some of the kids that it was my birthday by saying in Amharic, “yesterday, I was 22 years old, and today I am 23!” They were really confused for awhile, then all of the sudden one kid seemed to understand. Before I knew it, they were all singing me happy birthday and bringing me a plastic hamburger as a cake (which I think is actually supposed to be a dog toy) and a rock as a candle. It was so awesome. Then after school, the teachers made me coffee and sugar popcorn as a birthday celebration and a goodbye party. They sang me happy birthday and even brought me a beautiful piece of Ethiopian artwork to take back with me. Then I got home, and everyone at my house wished me happy birthday like 400 times. And our cook had made lemon bars, which are my absolute favorite things in the entire world. After dinner, we had a campfire and talked about random stuff while one of the guys in the house played the guitar. We were going to roast marshmallows, but I had accidentally eaten them all beforehand.After the campfire, we watched A Cinderella Story. It was one of the best birthdays I can remember. I'm gonna miss this place!

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