Ugandan Cranes We go! We go We go!

This is the cheer used for the Ugandan national Football (soccer) team. Today on our run the kids started singing this. It reminded me of cross country practices at SMC when we sang Disney songs across South Quad at Notre Dame. Cassie and I changed it to America for a little bit. Our run was so fun today. A lot of the neighborhood kids came and we went at a fun conversational pace. When the Boda Bodas came through we would start chanting Boda boda boda boda boda and then at one point we started skipping.

We started the day out by going to mass in Rutooro. After mass we handed out a few goodies to some of the neighborhood kids who came with us. The bookstore had donated some Saint Mary's polos and SMC socks and we gave them to the some of the boys. Gen and I also managed to rustle up two SMC shirts to hand out as well.

Last night I traced 50 dot to dot pictures for my students. Eugenia has been working with my class on dot to dots during numbers so i promised her I would make copies. After hand tracing fifty pictures I just like to remind eveyone, including myself, of how lucky you might be to have even the crappiest copy machine that never works and always jams! My students did an excellent job with the dot to dots. Even the young students were able to do it accurately!

During P.E. I led both nursery baby classes in jumping jacks, sideways bending, and under leg bending. I even threw in a few high knees and arm swings courtesy of SMC XC dynamic warm-up. Then I made them all run to the tree and back a few times and jump through the tires, which they love.

I think maybe the students had a side of "try Sarah's patience" with their porridege because things got a little rough in the afternoon.

First of all, after break I always find my students beating each other up when I get back into the classroom. Edger is normally the instigator which is quite surprising since he is Judith's (Nora's teacher's) son. The difficulty lies in the language barrier between me and my students. I can pull the students apart and tell them no and give them my best "teacher look", but I cannot actually communicate in Rutooro that hitting each other is wrong. I don't want to raise my voice at the students and I don't want to put them in 'time out' because that won't teach them not to hit, especially if they don't understand why they are being made to sit in the chair. So I am at a loss on how to discipline them. Annett and Eugenia don't seem concerned when i mention it to them. The other problem I have is how can I tell my students it's wrong to hit when they see the other teachers hitting students?

When we used the whiteboards today, my students decided that every marker was dead and they needed to trade it in for a new color, or every student needed to show me their whitebard at the same time. If nothing else, I should at least come back from Africa as a more patient person and an expert of deep breathing.

Even still, I absolutely love all my students! Today when they called me Mizungu I just looked around behind me and said "Where? Where? I don't see a Mzungu!" They thought it was absolutely hilarious.

When Eugenia was teaching today Obama was apparently falling asleep because she made him stand up, except he cannot stand still. After he started wandering around the classroom touching every poster on the wall she finally sent him back to sit down.

Eugenia has been working on reading with the students, putting vowel sounds with one consonant and having them practice. So the board will look something like this:

pa pe pi po pu, ra re ri ro ru, sa se si so su

So today I pointed to the sa and had them read it and then I pointed to the ra and had them read it. Then I put them together and had them read my name! Ironically it would normally really bother me when someone forgets the /h/ on my name, but now not so much.

Today Eugenia and Annett got into a tiff because Eugenia made a poster with about twenty to thirty simple three letter words to have the students read; however Annett wouldn't let her use it because she didn't include pictures on it. After Annett told her that they started arguing in Rutooro. Then Annett walked away and Eugenia said she was still going to keep it and began to roll it up. I think Eugenia wanted me to take her side, but I was not about to get in the middle of them.