This is Ghana be good!: Day 4

Busy day and early morning wake-up tomorrow so here's a few highlights from the day from Ali, Molly and Karen:

Ali: I was able to teach today! It was fun! I got to teach the students about curved, bent and straight lines with Karen and my new friend from Molly. I never really learned the bent line thing in school but was still able to teach it. The kids keep impressing me with how much they know. I really enjoyed having the teacher there with us because when the kids weren’t able to understand what we were saying he was able to translate for us. We played well off of each other. I tried to teach them hangman, but it was a failure so we moved on to science. At recess and all the little kids wanted to hold my hand and they held it as if it was different from theirs. We played group games such as “Head – Shoulders – Knees and Toes” and then we moved on to block building that had been delayed from earlier because of rain. It was exciting making 23 today compared to the 12 we were able to make yesterday in the same amount of time.

Molly: Today teaching went way better than expected! We were able to take up the whole class period of profits and losses and most of the kids seemed to understand even the harder problems. It was awesome to see the kids come up to the board and even if they needed some help, work through the problems and explain to the class how they did them. We also went to visit host families, which was at first intimidating. The house we visited was a headmaster of a house and he was very friendly. First he showed us how his wife made cookies, then the children of the neighborhood who had come to meet us tried to teach us to dance. The Americans had absolutely no rhythm and looked like fish flopping out of water while the Ghanains all moved in sync with the songs they were singing. Next it was time for us to teach them something…so I decided to teach them to play duck duck goose. They enjoyed the game and seemed to include everyone, even the smallest children. The women who watched became so amused and also enjoyed watch the children play a new game. It made my day to think that we can teach them something new, but also learn so much from them and their sense of community. It made me mss the days when I was amused by anything and everything outdoors and could play until the sun went down with my friends.

Karen: My day started with a 6 am two-plus mile barefoot run on the beach with Molly and two others. While this in itself was fun, the real treat was stopping by a group a fishermen and helping them pull their boat on shore in a huge tug-of-war type fashion. School was great today as well. I started out with Ali and Molly from Kentucky in a second grade class and thoroughly enjoyed team-teaching with the girls and regular classroom teacher. Part way through the class another man came up to the window and motioned for me to come outside. He asked if I would go into the class next door because the children wanted to see a “white lady”. The classroom teacher, Bianca, had a great personality and spoke beautiful English. She walked me around the classroom and had each student (all 35 of them) stand and introduce themselves. She then pulled a chair to the front of the class and had me take a seat. It was then the kids turns to ask me any questions they wanted. Soooo much fun! After a bit, one raised their hand and asked if I could teach them a lesson. Bianca pointed me towards the board and asked me to work with them on upper and lower case letters. What a treat. The afternoon was spent with all of our students from GLA going out in the village to meet their host families. I accompanied the adult leaders to the home of the town King or Chief. Essentially his role seems to be like that of a mayor. All civic cases go through him and a group of elders he oversees. He was dressed in traditional Ghana garb and graciously spent more than an hour answering questions about government, history, culture and traditions. I struggled a bit with his English and do not dare to quote him on anything! Very informative and entertaining.

We are headed to Ho (not quite sure where that is other than a 3 hour bus ride away) tomorrow and am not sure what the internet service will be. . . The plan is to stay there for two nights so please be patient with us! We are having a grand old time J