Gertie's Creche Day 1

A creche is an unregulated daycare. And today I started working at one. Unregulated meaning there's no mandated education component, although they do work with the kids a little bit.

I'm working with 4 and 5 year olds. As long as it's not raining, we get to be outside which is good, because - as warned - the inside is swarming with about 40 kids 3 and under. In a room smaller than most of your living rooms. Rain is in the forecast, so I'll get to experience mixing the 20 of my kids in with the others. I'm sure that will be a different experience.

I again walked into the room full of excited "white person" squeals. I'm glad to know that tomorrow when I go it won't be such a novelty. The teacher I'm helping has told them to call me Miss Mary instead of White Person. (I told her I didn't mind "White Person" but am not going to stand in the way of life manners.)

The day started with singing (all in one room) as a group. I hope to at least pick up some of the regular songs. It ended with a version of something I recognized. "God is great. God is good. Thank you for the food." And then the kids had porridge.

Afterward we had our group outside and went through the songs that teach the months of the year and the days of the week and the parts of the body. They do an extended version of head, shoulders, knees and toes...but it's clear they know that song as well.

The first thing I started doing that they picked up was the "boogie shush." All I did was combine a little dance move with putting my finger up to my mouth. It made shushing more fun and got them to smile, so that was cool.

The teacher wanted to work on coloring/writing but didn't have enough worksheets. I'm going to take some copies in tomorrow. She told me they don't know how to write their names. I can't fault them tho, because I can't yet say many of them. They say them once for me. I repeat it. They repeat back to me. I say what I think they're saying, they laugh and we move on to the next one. I have one little boy named Hope, so I at least have that one down. I'm hoping our weekly language classes (I'll be taking Xhosa (Kosah)) will help with that.

So anyway, since we couldn't do the coloring, we did puzzles. Many of which didn't have all the pieces. Such a bummer to not be able to help them with resources.

While doing the puzzles, one of the girls took to playing with my hair. I'm gonna bring a brush and clips tomorrow and try and find a time when it won't cause pandemonium.

After puzzles came playtime, and I had already told the teacher I wanted to try Duck, Duck Goose. Luckily one of the boys had played before. I relayed directions to the teacher and she translated. It went really well and was super funny. We all ended up laughing as the kids picked it up and figured out which way to run and when to sit down. Some of the head pats were harder than they should have been. I caught myself several times wanting to say "doucement" ("gentle"/"softly" in French). I have a problem that whenever I go somewhere where I don't speak the language, I feel like my French should work. It doesn't.

The kids then went to the park. I'm not allowed to leave the creche so I switched with a teacher in the 3 year old class. We worked on shapes and colors and unfortunately for them, their teacher wasn't always right...Anything is better than nothing I guess tho.

Next came lunch. As I gave each child (again in my class) their bowl they said "Thank you" in English. It was very sweet, very clear, and they were very happy to be speaking to me in my language. (I was happy too, altho I'm looking forward to knowing at least the basic words/commands in their language.)

We leave our placements after lunch, so it's not really a long day at all. Four hours. I hope to share a little MAB-ness with them and leave them feeling better, maybe knowing more...

(FYI I probably won't go this in-depth each day...will most likely stick with the highlights...) It was really fun to reconnect with the others at lunch and hear about everyone's mornings. The guy in my group ended up teaching a 6th grade class all on his own. His first day. He thought of some great ideas. Much better than I would have on the fly. I think 4 and 5 year olds are about my spur-of-the-moment knowledge building level. No, but really.

So, other things...

Last night we saw a comedian at the University of Cape Town (we can walk to the campus). His name is Siv Ngesi and the show is called DEKAF. It's touted as a "white, black comedy...about blacks who think like whites...told by a black guy..who sounds white." Race is very openly discussed here and this show was hilarious. At one point he asked a question and Ashley responded, giving away that there were Americans in the crowd...(he picked up the accent). He had some fun with that. There were of course a lot of SA-centric jokes, but for the most part we got it.



Also...the bell I mentioned in the last entry (apologies for all the verbal diahhrea)...They ring a bell in the house for meals, or when it's time to leave, or time for a class...we're already like Pavlov's dogs...the bell rings and we come a-runnin...

Well it's time for our language class...I really do wanna spice these entries up with some pix...truth be told I'm surprised at how few I've taken so far. Planning on improving that.

It's still hot and sunny, altho as I mentioned there's supposed to be rain for the rest of the week. We hope it clears up for our winery tour on Saturday. Of course after the first or second winery we probaby won't care.