New Adventures

On Sunday, my friends and I went to the Medina (the old city) and were walking around. One of my friends needed to buy chicken, so she went up to a shop that had a bunch of live chickens asked for a chicken and the man slit it's throat, dumped it in a bucket so the blood would drain out and once it was dead, plucked and gutted it right in front of us. This was definitely a new experience that made my stomach churn a bit. In Morocco you cannot kill a chicken by wringing its neck for religious reasons.

That night, a bunch of friends were over at someone's house talking and playing cards and I learned what the word pontificating means and that it is similar to the word pontif (pope), so it morphed into the word poping. Anyways, all that to say, I've learned a new word. (Later, when we were playing a card game with teams, my team was called the pontificators, and we won!)

Today was a rainy day and the students could not go out to recess or sport and we do not have an indoor gym and often classrooms are being used or there are no teachers to watch the students. Therefore, we had many children who were not sure where to go and teachers not sure where to put these children. It was quite chaotic and our staff has decided that we need a plan, but as of yet, there is none, and it will probably rain again the rest of this week.

Yesterday, I tried something and I was not at all sure if it would work or not. One thing my writing teacher did with us when I was in fourth grade was rewriting stories. Yesterday, I started out this activity by doing an example as a class. We took the story, summarized it, and then changed the characters and the setting. After this, we worked on describing and adding more detail. Most of the students were all very engaged and participated. Many students were incredibly eager to add their ideas. At the end of the class, one of the students said, “Geez! Time flies when you’re having fun!” This was encouraging to here. I would say that not only did the students enjoy this lesson, but I really enjoyed it, because I got to see their thoughts and enthusiasm for learning and being creative.