Monday - first day of teaching

by Rob and Georgia T

So, today was an early rise and the start of a truly spectacular, emotional, and draining day.

We rose around 6:30, to be ready and on the school bus by 7:30, I think we all appreciated the sleep, and the cold showers in the morning to wake us up for the day.

The bus ride in was as bumpy as always, we were all feeling both excited and anxious, little did we know that some of the children from the school would be joining us on our journey on the bus. There was a wave of excitement from the team when we stopped to pick them up, and they all looked so nervous.

When we arrived at the school we were met by a humungous crowd of screaming, over-excited and smiling children, we all high fived as many as we could on our way to breakfast.

Breakfast, as I’m sure you can imagine by now was: CURRY! But still flavorsome.

So after breakfast it was straight into our first lesson, where the children were already siting and awaiting our arrival, when we entered the class stood, greeted us, and saluted, it was sooo cute!

Rob: My lesson went much better than we thought, all the children seemed to really enjoy it, and they were a lot smarter than we thought they would be and understood us incredibly well, we designed flags with the and explored an inflatable globe.

Georgia: As soon as I entered the classroom I felt confident and welcomed. We handed out our blue wristbands so the students could be recognized as the blue team. Afterwards, we got our signals for example when to sit down, across to the children which we did through playing a game. The alphabet was the next thing we did and the children were so enthusiastic to repeat the letters we were saying. We handed out the activity prepared which was a word-search, which at first took a bit of explaining to do but once that was done they got on with it really well.

For the outdoor activities we both played various games, such as DUCK, DUCK, DUCK, GOOSE, which the children are far far too good at! We think they realized they can win when they pick us, so they carry on doing so.

For one of the indoor activities we made bracelets using beads and platting wool and string, this went well and they picked it up quickly. The other one was making and decorating bunting, so we could hang them in the classroom and brighten it up.

Free time, was after the assembly that was lead by Paul, that contain some great stories, songs, dances and entertainment. Free time itself was crazy!!! It was meant to be time for us to get to know the children, however, there are so so many of them! They were crowding around us, each member of the team had at least about 8 children wanting to play, hold hands, piggy backs, games of cricket football, kites etc… You name it, we played it.

As a whole the day was nothing short of an amazing experience, that I am sure none of us will ever forget and yet this is just the start, we have the remainder of the week, we are all tired, hot, and ache, however the energy and spirit of the children, We are sure, will carry us all through the week!