Precious Moments, Volume II

So, the quiet week arrived! This week has been strange and calm. We started monthly exams Monday and finished Tuesday, amazingly. We pushed them through on the kids, twelve tests in two days. Otherwise, not much is happening until we leave on Saturday morning to go to Moshi to see Mt. Kilimanjaro. In the meantime, I wanted to post a blog, and I decided it was about time for another volume of Precious Moments. Some of these are funny, some adorable, some strange, but I’m sure they’ll all brighten your day. They always do for me :)

-          Word of the day is fatal. Student produced sentence: “The water is fatal.” It’s certainly not sanitary, but fatal….

-          When asked what a butcher does, “It is a man who sells cows that are dead.” Fair enough.

-          Science exam question, ‘Name three things that are involuntary.’ I was looking for things such as heartbeat, digestion, breathing, reflexes, etc. Response: “Tree, house stones.” 

-          Journal topic, “If you could be any animal, what would you be and why?” Response: “My name is ______ and I want to be a lion of God.”

-          Found in English work: “Don’t play with fire, but it is also fun.”

-          On Valentine’s Day, we had a great day. A seemingly silly activity with the Class VI girls of pairing them up with boys for Valentine’s Day snowballed into writing Valentine’s for all the boys and girls in Classes V, VI and VII. Interestingly, for Class VI girls starting the activity, they were awful, truly awful! I know they aren’t quite ready to admit that boys aren’t so bad (even in Class VII they still won’t admit it, but they definitely like them). So, they wrote things like “You are not mine forever”, “I don’t like boys”, “You are not my type” I think a few even wrote “I hate you!” It was so bad! The boys on the other hand did much better. One boy wrote “Well, I’ve never written a letter to a girl, but Madam Christine and Madam KJ say I have to so here it goes.” After noticing the disparity between the two, I decided to say something:

“Girls, the boys are writing such nice Valentine’s to you. You are being so mean! What if they boys start crying when they read your cards?”

                           “Madam, you say that the boys are nice now, but what happens some day when they
                            get us pregnant?”

The good news, she learned something in science.

 

-          Word of the day is vivid. A Class V boy thus informed us “The class IV boys are vivid.”  

-          Journal topic, “Name a problem in your world and write about it’s solution.” First line only: “I don’t like to play with a lion.” I assure you all back home, this is not a frequent problem in Morogoro

-          Written across a notebook “Don’t steal, Jesus see you.”

-          I have been informed that there is a third gender status entitled “Madam.” When one of the boys wouldn’t share with a girl because he’s afraid of her, it was only natural to say,

“Well, I’m a girl, are you afraid of me?”

                          “No! You’re Madam.”
                       “So? I’m still a girl.”
                       “You’re a girl, but you’re a teacher. That’s different.” 

-          Science question, “Name and describe a stimulus.” Answer: “A stimulus is something that you can see in your nose.” I’m honestly impressed they can see IN their nose.

-          Word of the day is unbecoming. Student sentence is “It is unbecoming for a beautiful girl to fall down.” Aww!

-          An interesting problem with Swahili we come across is that in Swahili the ‘l’ and ‘r’ are switchable. We often get sentences that talk about “praying football” and “playing in the church.” Even in their names, something like “Laura” can become “Raula,” and I’ve actually started to do that with their names. It has yet to impact my English, but I’ve learned how to pronounce my r’s and l’s in Swahili. Anyway, one student once informed us she wanted to have “no rage.” In other words, knowledge.  

-          Found within English work: “If in the aeroplane, fly the aeroplane.” Indeed.  

-          Journal topic, “Write about your favorite superhero.” You should know the student who wrote this is a girl who lives in a Christian orphanage. “My favorite superhero is Bibleman. Bibleman have a power of God. God gave Bibleman a power. I like to be superman because to have the power of God. And when I be a superheros I would like my name to be Biblewoman and I will liked to have God’s power and I will like to help other because in my because in my life I like to help other and to help those who are not have father like me, or who are no have mother, like me, or all both of them.” She’s such a sweetheart!

-          One day, a boy was again not sharing with a girl, so Christine asked him what he was going to do one day when he was married. (Note, name has been changed.)

              Lucas: “Madam, I’m going to be a pastor. I’m not going to get married.”
               Christine: “Pastors can get married. Pastor Umba (our pastor) is married.”
                Lucas: “Yes, but that’s Pastor Umba. This is Pastor Lucas!”
                A few days later I asked him how his Sunday sermon went. He told me he forgot to preach!

-          And to conclude this volume, “Math is difficulter than English.”

Bwana asifewe, God gave me amazing kids to teach!  

God bless

Kjirstin