I'm in love with riding in the back of the truck while watching the sky fade from blue to orange to black. I'm in love with the people that I work with and the kids that I teach. I'm in love with the humidity and the street markets and the way everyone smiles.
I've become a new person here. I'm afraid I won't know who to be when I come home.
Today I taught the younger kids English at the children's home. I've noticed that they haven't been very motivated lately (party because I mostly throw my "lessons" together on the car-ride over) and I feel bad because learning English is no fun, especially after a long day at school. So today I shamelessly bribed them into liking me with candy.
Oh boy, it worked. As soon as I pulled those fruit-flavored mentos out of my bag, their eyes lit up. Two hours flew by. It was so fun. I taught them London-bridge and Ring-around-the-rosies and Head-shoulders-knees-and-toes. They don't really know what they're saying...they mostly blabber out whatever I tell them to, but hopefully they'll catch on eventually.
I thought that the English alphabet was old news to them, so we just ran through the song real fast. Turns out I was wrong. The ABCs are definitely not old news for the younger ones, so my gameplan needed some adjustment. I drew each letter up on the board and then split the kids into two teams of three. Two people from each team came up and I pointed to a letter. Whoever said the name of the letter first got to blow on their team's paper fish once (the goal was to blow the fish to the other side of the room before the other team). They loved it, and I loved it. Some of them are better at the alphabet than others, so it was funny to hear them shout "B!..Y!...A!" when I was pointing to R or something. The winning team got two pieces of candy, and the losing team got one. But the real winner was me, of course. I think I've finally won their little hearts!
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