Little Victories and a Video!

Time is flying by here. I can't believe that I only have a month left! We will be staying in Tamale for the next 3 weeks and then I am finished teaching and we will be traveling down to the Cape Coast. I know that these next three weeks are going to go by faster than I wish so I am spending as much time as possible with my students.

Our director took a video of me with the girls in my class. I do this "activity" with them about once a day to get their blood moving. Here is a snippet of why I love it here so much!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtUM_JGwG_k&feature=youtu.be

The ending is cheesy, but all Fred wanted me to say was "Hi I'm Jenny and I'm from America." So that's all I said!

Below are a few of the little victories we have had here this week:

Victory Number One: I took 8 of my girls to the internet cafe down the road. They are all 10 to 13 years old. They had NEVER seen a computer before. (Even though I know this it still surprises me when they do not know the words "mouse" or "keyboard" or "loading" or "Google" or "Facebook.") Anyway, I showed them how to turn it on, we went to the Google homepage and they all practiced writing their name and saying "hello." Then we searched for pictures and information about Ghana. Many of them had not seen a map of Ghana until that morning in class so they were really excited/intrigued to see all of the pictures on the screen. I also showed them my email and they were so amazed that you can actually talk to other people through the screen. I think they all had a lot of fun and the internet isn't such a foreign thing anymore. The true victory in this story is that three of the girls came to my house this morning and told me that they had gone to the internet on their own that night! In just 45 minutes they went from never seeing a computer to feeling comfortable going to a cafe on their own! It's events like this that make me want to stay here longer so that I could really have to show all of them all there is to see and learn and experience in the world outside of their village.

Victory Number Two: On Wednesday I had my afternoon class with 3 of the girls who are really behind in my class. The class on Wednesday went really well but I had to leave early. The girls noticed that we were ending earlier than usual and asked if they could come back the next day to have class again! Now, many of the girls here are very eager to learn. But these three girls often become discouraged because they are so far behind. They stop paying attention in class, resulting in them falling further behind, which leads to them not participating in class or enjoying learning. But after that lesson on Wednesday they each spoke up 3 or 4 times in class on Thursday! We had a follow up lesson on Friday afternoon (just the three of us) and by the end of the class they were excited and engaged and cheering when they got the answer correct.

Victory Number Three: I did the "human knot" team building activity with my older girls at the night class on Friday and they could not get enough of it. We also practiced speaking and writing in English by coming up with "Would you rather..." questions and answering them. For example, one of them came up with the question, "Would you rather have 15 children or 0 children?" It was a pretty even split with some preferring no children and some preferring 15. 

Victory Number Four: We convinced another one of our house mates to come to the pool with us and he got in, put his head under, tried the breaststroke, and can move from his stomach to standing in the water comfortably.

I could keep going but for now I will stop. I will try to update again in a week. Hopefully I will have more victories to share!