Back to School

Dear Friends,

My summer vacation ended quickly when school started on Monday. My last couple days have been quite hectic and tiring, but it is a good tired because I am glad to be back at school and working with the children everyday. There are many many children at the school. The Director told me Monday evening that there were close to 200 children the first day and there are still more coming to sign up. This is way up from last year, where we had just over 100 children at the school. I am not sure how they all fit, but someone it works out.

The first couple days of school I have been helping in the preschool. It has been difficult because there are lots of babies and lots of crying. Preschool here is very different from preschool at home. Mostly because we have much less to entertain the children with here. There are also many babies and not enough teachers to comfort them all at the same time. I even had a baby sleeping on my back most of Tuesday. It is quite cute how it happened too. She was crying after her sister dropped her off so I held her for awhile and got her to calm down. Then I put her down and she came back to me and gave me “le pagne” (the cloth that the women here wear and use to put the babies on their back). At first I wasn’t sure why she was giving it to me, then I realized she was tired and wanted to be put on the back. So I tied her on my back and she was asleep within a few minutes. It always surprises me that the babies can sleep like that, but they are so used to it that it is actually easier for them to fall asleep. All of the teachers were very surprised and kept saying, “Wow. Even Tracy has a baby on her back.”

I have received my program for when I will go to each class to teach English, but I haven’t started teaching yet. I think I will start next week. This year our school has added an extra level. It is the first year of what we would call middle school, or about equivalent to our seventh grade. This means that I will have even more work, because this is the level where English is part of the normal school curriculum here. But it is very good news because it means that our school is growing and parents can see that good things are happening at the school, so more are sending their kids to our school.

Another piece of news. I have decided to extend my time here. I had originally planned to return home in December. But then I felt like since I am working at a school, I did not want to start the school year working with the children and then just leave in the middle. I am working on making arrangements to stay until June and finish the school year with my students.

Thank you again for your continued prayers and support.

Tracy Pilewski