Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes

I’m in love with this country. With the scenery. With the people. With the food. This past week has been incredible and I’m starting to feel that I am gaining meaningful lessons –both in and out of class –as well as building positive relationships with my Lynedoch students, class partners and professors. Everything is coming together!

On Monday, Corie, Elyse and I ran our first class with our seventh graders and got to know our new students by making Valentine’s Day cookies (the best way to a kid’s heart is through their stomach, no?). Mr. Myburgh, our teacher, has given us full reign of the class, which is a bit intimidating in terms of disciplining the students. At the same time, though, this independence allows us to plan and facilitate our weekly class the way we choose and we have been brainstorming a very interesting and interactive curriculum for the semester!

(On a side note, if anyone at home has any good ideas for funding opportunities, please let me know! There are very few resources here in the school system, and while we don’t want to create a feeling of entitlement in the students, they could benefit greatly from some life skill/cultural lessons we have been planning, which need basic materials.)

This morning, my HIV/AIDS class went on a field trip to visit the local township of Khyamundi to meet with our community partners and start planning our prevention program for the semester. My group will be working with George, who is in charge of the Medical Knowledge Institute and runs health education workshops for community members. He took us on a tour of the facilities and I soon found myself in the midst of a small stampede of 3-, 4-, and 5-year olds, literally toppling over each other running to give us hugs. The kids in the daycare program were fascinated with our skin color and got endless enjoyment from our hair and jewelry. For some strange reason, a group of them were also fixated on my nose and made it their mission to try and pull it off (they almost succeeded too…) Attempting to shift their attention from my aching nostrils, I started an impromptu round of “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” and a few of the older ones joined in, singing and laughing. Although I was only there a short while, it was easy to feed off their excitement and energy!

Got to run to Afrikaans class (pop quiz on the alphabet, I think…I’ve resorted to basically clearing my throat in an attempt to make the ‘G’ sound. Really not the most attractive noise…) and get to meet with the Wendel clan arriving from the airport afterwards!