Jambo! I feel guilty about not posting more these past couple weeks so here’s a new post in case anyone is itching to hear more about TZ. I’m definitely glad it’s Friday because my teaching load had increased a lot this week and I stayed pretty busy. Like I said before, I did half days of teaching this week so most of my nights were spent cooking something for supper, eating, then planning and then snoozing!!! I did get a bit of a break (not sure if it was a break though) yesterday. David and I went to the Arusha campus of our school to do some planning with the P5/6 teachers there. We weren’t able to do planning earlier because one teacher was still on holiday but now that everyone is back we have to get some of our units going. Our unit we will be focusing on is “Work and Play.” School here is formatted a bit differently like I’ve also said before but the way they teach is in a PYP format. (the big picture idea that gets narrowed down) So for this unit we will be having discussions about what is work and what is play? How do different communities divide their time for work and play? Is all work worth the same? How does our choice of work influence our play? etc. So some heavy questions that kids are encouraged to debate about. With this unit we will be going on a field trip. We are going to Magara, which to my understanding so far is basically a remote village a few hours away where we’ll be able to do a bit of climbing, but also we will be talking with the tribe people there and asking them about what they do for work and play. How will that compare to us? I’m not sure but I’ll let you know in a few weeks. :)

Other good news…we have another teacher to help out in our class. We’re getting another student on Monday so that brings our numbers to 30 kids!! I don’t technically count as a teacher so when you look at their student to teacher ratio it’s pretty bad. So we have a teacher who is coming in to help in the mornings Mon. through Thurs. We already have some big plans for when the three of us will be in class. We changed the whole setup of our room so that there are three groups of students based on the level they are at. I am going to have the kids that struggle the most and so hopefully I'll be able to work on some of the basics with them and get them up to speed with the rest of the class. I think this is going to be a great opportunity for the kids and for us three teachers. We are really utilizing our resources by doing this.

I have a pretty relaxing weekend, just getting some lesson plans done and going to the markets with a friend. I want to try and pick up a few things to bring back home to all my wonderful family and friends back home :) Next weekend I'm going to Kenya to a place called Salt Lick (google it) apparently its amazing and the animals come up to the place you stay and drink from a water hole and you just sit there eating your breakfast and watch them right in front of you. I'm VERY excited for that!!

Hope all is well back home. I've been able to Skype with some people today so I feel in the loop about what's going on in the home land. Have a great weekend everyone!
Love,
Alissa