Week 1 - The school

Well I only ended up doing 1 week of volunteering, which I will go on to tell you later, but rather than going through our day by day journey I thought I would just list my highlights and possibly lowlights:

• 5am wake up to leave the house by 6am to catch the bus which took about 45 mins.


• Morning assembly - 30 minutes of singing the national anthem and reading out stuff. Oh and a really ugly looking and sounding teacher who shriked for about 20 minutes. Poor kids.


• Kids placing their big huge bags (and a few small suitcases) on the back of their chairs so they could barely sit on them


• Mafia kids at the back of the class. One girl fanning herself with some money and then picking on a small kid for some more money. I managed to stop this though. Well that time anyway.


• A huge amount of gay kids. Usually a couple would be made up of one huge fat kid and a complete opposite tiny kid. The tiny kid would sit stroking the fat kids head or sitting on his lap making 'bumming' movements. We weren't too sure what to do with these. They were only about 8 yrs old.


• Every kid wanting to touch you and shake hands and say good morning. I had a clear favourite who we'd see about 3 times a day and he'd come running over and high five us a few times. He was so happy.


• Teaching kids the YMCA


• Being constantly called 'Teacher, Teacher"


• Getting worried by the HUGE wasp, but then calming down when the naughty kid swats it out the air with his ruler and cuts it in to little pieces. Good work.


• The sleeping cat


• The random dog who walked in and out of our lessons


• Trying to teach the colour 'red', but giving up as they really can only manage 'wed'


• Spending 10 minutes on one kid telling him different ways to say 'I'm fine thank you'... That's all they say. Hello, how are you... and they say robotically 'i'm fine thank you, and you'... So after 10 minutes of teaching him 'I'm good thanks', I ask him again. "Hi, how are you?' and his response... 'I'm fine thank you, and you'...


• The bus home. It was hard to know which one to get so we minimised it to lookin out for the driver with massive hands (hands mcgee), and not getting on the one with the conductor who had a big scar on her face (burnface). Needless to say we got a few cabs home.

And then each evening we'd either head to the mall or just chill at the house (which we could only do because the supervisor took Kim and Vikki to a school up north for a few days).