Pull Up, Pull Up. Or We are Going to Crash!
After assuring the parents at home that we were not going to stunt our children’s academic growth by teaching them ourselves we had some work to do. Day #2 needed to go much better than Day #1.
We decided the problem with yesterday had to be that they went off on their own and just got frustrated. We hoped we were right. Today we worked with them and didn’t let them go on their own. We cruised through the entire lesson in 1 hour. Much better than the six it took yesterday. Mission accomplished.
The weather here has been lousy for the past few days. It’s been cold and rainy. The surprising thing about the homes here in Cape Town is most don’t have heat. If it gets to 50 degrees outside, the inside is not much warmer. Thankfully our home does have heat, but not exactly central heat. They have these large 2x2ft. white ceramic squares that hang off the wall an inch or two. When you plug them in, they heat up. Theory is it will heat the room up. It does help a bit, but obviously our thin Florida blood needs to thicken up a bit before we can take off the sweatshirts and slippers around the house.
Having said all that, we are all very aware that we have it very easy compared to many in this country. There is a township right over the hill from us. It is literally on one side of the hill is the “haves”, the other side, the “have-nots”. Each morning the workers from the township trudge up the hill to their jobs on this side. It is good they have work, but it is a constant reminder of how lucky we are to be in our shoes.
There are about 20 men building a home down the street from us. They have no major machinery, but have made huge progress in just a week since we’ve arrived. Today a cement mixer no bigger than 3×3 arrived at the work site. By sunset the cement slab of the house was poured and level. These guys are hard workers. Each time we drive by they are full of smiles and seem to enjoy their job. We should all learn from these men. Life can either be half empty or half full.
Tags: Children, Education, Kids, South Africa, Teaching, Travel
Administrator
Leave a Reply