Monday 12th August- Rachael and Lucy

Last night, there was an awful power cut which was really scary; there was loads of thunder and lightning but on the plus side, we saw an Ethiopian woman win the 10000 m in Athletics which was an exciting experience, literally everyone on the street ran into the hotel. When we worked up in the morning, the thunder had luckily subsided so it was safe for us to travel to the school. Unfortunately, on the way to the school we ran into difficulties as the supermarket didn’t stock Nutella which was a complete disaster. Luckily, we pulled through and managed to get to school with our oranges and bananas but later Emily had to get on public transport to retrieve the missing sandwich fillings (because we’re running a bit low on carbs at the moment). Summer school was a great experience but also fairly challenging due to the language barrier, especially the children’s habit of replying ‘yes’ to everything including ‘What is your name?’. The children are adorable though and took well to the programme, I was very pleased with how the day had went.  The bracelets were a bit tricky however, we had a few ‘interesting’ designs, it’s difficult to tell whether the children actually understand. It’s surprising how much English some of the children know, when you think about how rubbish we are at foreign languages (even us A level language students). I find the whole situation at school so interesting,  it really makes us appreciate what we have at home. (Rachael)

The teaching in the morning had been really good, especially once we had figured out how to talk to the children properly, being a floater it was really nice to be able to see all of the children. All of them were so excited and worked so hard at everything that they did. They also really enjoyed all of the English work, it’s such a change from schools in the UK where most kids don’t want to be at the school, every single one wanted to be there and everything that they learnt was interesting to them. We had a lunch, of yet more carbs and fruit, though the peanut butter was an extra surprise. And we’re supposed to start on the project work, only to have an absolute downpour of rain so we couldn’t hear a thing that was being said inside due to the tin roof. Once it subsided we got into different groups to start moving rocks, thinking of ideas for the mural and cementing the newest classroom. We set up a chain for the rocks and it ended with all of us covered in mud. The cementing was much harder than the women who were doing it made it look and barely any of us could do it. But the whole day had been productive and though all of us were tired and covered in mud we were so happy that the children had seemed to enjoy the day. (Lucy)