Just a quickie (so to speak)

Today was our first proper day training. We spent the morning learning about the history of the charity, then we spent the next part planning lessons. Then came the really fun part of meeting our first Honkers children and trying to put the lesson plans into action. Whats's great is that the lessons place more emphasis on fun rather than actual work, desks tend to be moved to the side and the main idea is to try and merge fun activities with learning English. This is the case for all except Robyn, more light has been shed on her post. It turns out she will be the only person working in a total governement run school. What this means for her, in general day to day experience has yet to be known, mainly because she is the first one ever doing it. (yikes) The kids themselves which we dealt with were brilliant, I was surprised at how good their English was, and expected the task to far more difficult than it turned out to be. In no time we had our kids jumping around, playing games and even managed to bring the Richard And Judy quiz 'You Say We Pay', into our English teaching, which they loved. Even better was after the first break we had other co-workers coming and asking for our ideas because their kids kept saying they wanted to be in our group. What it seems to come down to is how much energy you have, I asked a kid what his normal English lessons are like and he said he hated them, but liked learning the way we were doing it. I think it is just such a cultural difference, half the battle is to try and get the kids to realize that we are not like their teachers to the extent that we stand above them and just lecture them.

Anyway, Robyn and myself are going to find a nice chinese place with some others to go eat. Just in case you thought it was all work, in our photo album should be a few pictures we have taken recently on nights out. The first is of Robyn wet after our first rain storm. The second is at an Irish bar round the corner from our flats (yes it seems we have sorted them). It's a bit blurry but the people you see above everyone else are dancing on the bar, pics of Robyn and me doing the same will surely follow at some point. The last is of a guy we work with called Shaun, when everyone said they were going to 'dress up', for a night out, he went the whole hog, looking like a pimp.


b&R