One Year

Last week I had the opportunity to meet the new trainees upon their arrival to Kenya.  Like I said before, its always nice to get out of here for a short break and spend some time in a decent hotel.  It was an interesting experience to see them right as the got off the plane.  I felt like an RA in a dorm and they were a bunch of incoming freshmen.  They had many questions about Kenya and what its like to be a Peace Corps Volunteer.  I was happy to answer any questions they had.  It reminded me of myself a year ago, moving to Kenya to become a PCV and really not having any expectations.  While it was nice to meet them all right away, a few days afterwards I came down with the flu (possibly this swine thing everyone’s talking about).  But everything is fine now.

Unfortunately I missed some class time being away in Nairobi and then getting sick.  I did manage to give the kids a bunch of work to do before I left such as some worksheets and word finds that I made to keep them busy while I was gone.  We have also been working on a sweet little art project that I am realizing will go a long way.

I handed out two pieces of construction paper to each student.  Beforehand I told them that I was going to pick the colors so there would not be any fighting.  Once everyone had their construction paper they had to fold them over.  This gave me an opportunity to review a prior ‘whole and halves’ fraction lesson.  Then they had to share my scissors and cut along the folded line.  Then they had to switch one half of each color with each person sitting to either side of them.  In the end everyone had four different colored halves which we proceeded to staple into small books.  Basically, I had this idea to make books out of the construction paper but I really had not figured out what I was going to have them write in the books.

Once we were finished making the actual books I realized that they really love them and they’re going to bring them home to show their parents and my hope is that they will look through them often over the holiday.  I figured it would be a good way to put a lot of the information we learned and then they would constantly be reviewing it.  So each page in the book had a simple topic.  One page just listed the months of the year, another had the days of the week, another had time, another had ‘opposites’, another consisted of writing a word in plural form, whereas another was the use of ‘a’ and ‘an’ and vowels.  We’re not finished yet.

Earlier this week we had a visitor who fitted some of the students with hearing aids.  I’ve noticed that a few kids have hearing aids but I never really investigated into the quality of the aid.  I just assumed it was of very poor quality and was most likely some brand that I never heard of.  Anyways, I went to introduce myself to our visitor and I starting asking him questions about the hearing aids.  Much to my surprise they are the same brand as mine.  The model isn’t the same but it was neat to see that same familiar Phonak brand that my family uses.  One of the students that received a hearing aid is in my class.  It has been interesting to see him function with it and hear new sounds.  I try to test him in class by making different noises.  When I do a very loud low hum he first thought it was a plane flying overheard.  Since he has figured out that its me every time I hum he just smiles and points at me.  During the middle of PE he heard some nearby farm machinery and his face lit up.  I was curious to see just exactly what the sound from his aid was like so I did a little experiment and switched one of his with one of mine.   Obviously we did not switch ear molds, I only switched the aids. It wasn’t bad, just different.