Ramblings

Seems like there isn't a whole lot going on around here these days, but then I think back to my day and realize that I actually was semi-productive!

I'm still facilitating an English tutorial 3 times per week for my JCFI high  school kids and they're really impressing me lately!  I'm trying to come up with parts of the English language they might not necessarily learn in school (school lessons are full of grammar and attempts at improving reading comprehension).  So far, my aim with them is to come up with fun activities that they enjoy... while learning something in the process.  Last week while I was gone, I left lesson plans and activities for learning phrasal verbs and they seemed to have really learned it well when I inquired on Monday.  This week we played some Exquisite Corpse (my absolute favorite game... I've done it with almost every class I've ever taught).  First we played by drawing a creature and that segwayed into "chain stories" where one person writes the intro/beginning of a story, the next writes the conflict/problem, the next writes the solution, and the last writes the ending/conclusion.  We're only about half way through at this point but there are some good story starters happening!

We also practiced writing and creative thinking by playing a riddle game.  I gave some examples, handed out cards with the name of an object, and the students were challenged to write a riddle in the first person describing their object.  Each student had an opportunity to read the riddle to the class and we made it a competition to see who could guess the most correctly.  Some of them were really unbelievably impressive!  I have to admit, if I always made the students speak their answers or only practice speaking, I would think they're on a much lower level than they are... but that's just because they're so shy!! Allowing them time to think and draft their responses first before sharing generates much richer responses.  I'll have to keep this in mind!

I really enjoy working with the high school kids and, at times, I wish I would have been assigned to a high school instead.  I'm just thankful for the opportunity to be involved with both schools.

Today was an unbelievably brutal day, heat wise.  Apparently there was a scheduled brown out for today (news to me), which means that there's no power from 8am to 5pm.  This means NO FANS.  I ended up doing some laundry, convincing myself to work out (which was probably not the smartest thing to do in 118 degree weather, sorry Ricky), sitting still to try to stop sweating (didn't work), "tutoring" my neighbor kids (they wanted to practice math), and babysitting Rhett Butler while Hunter ran some errands in Naga.  I know I probably complain about the heat more than you want to hear, but seriously, it's unlike anything I could ever imagine.  A fellow PCV put it best in her Facebook status earlier when she said "I honestly didn't think the Earth could get this hot".  That heat + no fans = miserable.  I literally don't think there was a time at all today when I wasn't sweaty/sweating... including now as I sit in my house at 9pm with the fan on.  Not even when I finished my cold shower.

Anyway, enough complaining.  You can be sure that the next full day of brown out will be spent somewhere in Naga with air con and wifi.  I guess I'm a fairly lucky PCV for having that option!

And now for the daily dose of Bernardino!

Sleeping under the bed while I worked out.  I guess he learned his lesson when I accidentally kicked him in the jaw while doing butt-kicks!  Whoops!

The KUs!  They've had a lot of brotherly bonding/play time lately. 

My new neighbor kids brought over a puppy for me to see today.  Bern checked her out and started barking pretty viciously... not cool.  The pup was so cute though!  Hard to believe that's the size Bern was when I got him!

 Better picture of the pup!