20080730 Merilyn and Stephen's Typical Day

Shall I tell you about a typical day? We start early with shared devotions in Romans, and Chinese brekkie - dumplings, noodles, congee, watermelon, lemon cake. Then it's off thru the city streets, braving the traffic by crossing in a phalanx at the pedestrian crossing (vehicles don't stop at pedestrian crossings, you have to dart between them or stare them down thru sheer force of numbers) to catch our bus. Buses here are little 15-seater things that come every two minutes or so - great way to run a transit system!

Off at our stop, and it's a 500m walk along a concrete road lined by concrete walls topped with broken glass - don't know what's behind the walls, and not likely to find out any time soon. An open sewer runs beside us and bikes and trucks constantly bip us out of their way. The concrete walls give way to open fields of rice, eggplant, corn, pumpkin, beans and many greens. Ahead are mountans, obscured by the effluent from the smoke stacks of many factories.

Then it's in thru the school gates, across a broad expanse of concrete - no grass or trees for these kids - and into the 4-storey school building. Everything's dusty, the windows are barred, dusty and many are broken. Our students are hanging over the balconies waving and calling out to us.

Then we have 3 hours of lessons. The students range in age (from 13 to 15), in capability and in interest. Meeting the differing needs is a challenge. Albert and I look after 31 students. We do reading and pronounciation activities, practise dialogues and break it up with games, songs and dances, and a multi-media presentation on life values and morals.

Then it's back to the hotel by bus for lunch, all dishes hand-picked by Auntie Alsie (thank you Auntie Alsie for such delicious food!), planning lessons in our classroom teams, shopping for supplies and maybe a quick nap. The students continue with other lessons while we're away.

We return in the late afternoon to play some games with them - anything involving balls or running is popular; we eat dinner with them, a good chance to sit and quietly chat, then after dinner usually show a movie. Last night we tried setting up outside - they don't have an assembly hall or any room that fits more than one class - so we set the projector up, the kids brought out chairs, the local shopkeepers quietly pulled chairs up at the back, and as the sun set and the picture brightened, we settled down to watch Narnia.