Happy 4th of July!! (belated)

It is Sunday!! Happy belated 4th of July all! We all almost forgot here, until we saw Aaron’s nametag at the conference which had the message along with little fireworks drawn in. I missed celebrating on Friday but we had the teaching conference with all of the American teachers and Ugandan teachers that morning and an article review discussion right afterwards at 5, we were all talked out and just ended up coming home and playing cards. I don’t even miss tv here because it feels like we are camping. There are 11 of us staying here and we are getting along pretty well for people who have been out of the dorms for quite a few years!

We ended up having a mini-celebration Sat. afternoon after the 2nd day of the conference. We all went over to the IC house, where everyone else is staying and played volleyball, cards, hung out, napped in front of the fan! (We don’t have one and it gets pretty humid here right before the rain… at least for the west coast people it’s humid!) We looked into buying one, but it was going to cost around 50,000 shillings which is like $55.00 for a really basic fan. We decided against it.

My teacher, Amono Sarah, gave birth on Wednesday night to a baby girl! Which is awesome and not. This means that I will have to find a new teacher to work with. So far I plan to stay with one of Sarah’s classes, work with another geography teacher, and hopefully get involved with the teacher training college that we live next door to. I observed on of their classes last week and I am going again on Monday. I really would like to know how teachers are trained here, because what we IC peeps have noticed is that lecture is the main method of teaching.

Most of our teachers lecture and give notes and the students copy notes, there is very little participation from the students in most classes. The students are extremely respectful to all teachers but the student-teacher relationship we enjoy in the states is lacking in the classroom here. It will be interesting to see how this develops as I get to work more with all of the teachers. I miss you all, but am loving it here! I will have so many stories to tell when I return I will bore you all to tears!

By the way!
I haven’t showered in three days… you’d be surprised how fresh you feel with a baby wipe bath! Jealous I couldn’t hang out with you all for July 4th! Love the comments! Will answer the questions as I can, but I’m on Allison’s computer and she is waiting for it back!

Talk soon!
Apwoyo!
Jolene