Long Day

     As the title says, it has been a very long day, but it has not been hot!!  It has been about 60 degrees all day and it was AMAZING!!!  On Fridays our LSCE class starts at 9 and goes till' 4.  7 hours of class is a lot to work with.  Tyler seems like he is just about to pass out next to me.  Even though today was very long, it was also very good.  This class is going to be a lot of fun and I think it's one of those classes that will pretty much change the way we look at things.  Our bus was SUPER late today, so of course we were late, but Grant (the professor) didn't seem to mind too much.  One of the first things we do is go outside because it's normally the kids time to play outside.  Small breakfast foods are on tables and they told us that we can take our food and go outside with the kids and such which is really cool.  There was a girl from Monday who remembered talking to me and called me over to talk to her and her new friend.  I will eventually be able to put names in here, but I really can't even say them let alone spell them.  Girls here don't play sports.  I was talking to the girls about sports and they said that sports is what the boys do and the girls stand around and talk.  They did say that they were sometimes given times when all the girls could just play which is good.  The way some of the children "play" here makes me uncomfortable.  They can get very violent.  Normally it's the boys messing around and Grant warned us about it.  I normally chalk it up to being a different culture and boys will be boys, but today I saw a young boy grab a girl, push her head down, and start punching her.  At that point I started walking over there to see what was going on because if they were playing I would just feel awkward, but I wanted to make sure that it wasn't something bad.  The girl actually got away and just started fixing her hair like it was nothing.  Surprisingly, there were only 3 of us who went out there.  I almost thought that we were doing something wrong, but we weren't.  When playtime was over we went back in and found the class divided up into a few groups and they were just talking.  I was shocked, but maybe they didn't know.  The kids here are really excited about us.  Apparently one of them said, "We don't get to see the world, so the world comes to us."  I thought that was a really optimistic way of putting things.  For as little as these children have materially they are so positive.  They celebrate everything and take nothing for granted, even school.  These kids want to be in school and they look forward to waking up and coming to school.  I actually found myself feeling a little guilty for all the times I faked being sick so I wouldn't have to go.

     When we went back into the classroom, Grant told us we were going to meet the teachers who we will be working with.  My group (Maureen, Vanessa, and I) were really excited to meet our teacher, but when we actually met him he said that he was too busy and to find another time to talk to him.  That kinda sucked, but it just gave us more time to prepare lesson plans so it was ok.  After we "talked to our teachers" we went back to the classroom so that the Principal could talk to us.  This man is the most passionate Principal I have ever met in my entire life.  The way he talks about "his children" is in a way that anyone who heard him would actually think that they were his.  He started talking to us about how much the children look forward to when the international students come and looked at Tyler and Chris (another guy in the class) and said that the boys were so happy that they went out and played with them and stuff, and then he began to address me.  He was looking for someone in the class and he saw me and told me he saw me talking to the two girls I mentioned before and how excited they had been.  He started talkin about how 2 years ago one of the girls was a very good athlete, but she was diagnosed with scoliosis and is unable to do as much anymore.  When I met her I just thought that she was skinny, but after knowing that she has scoliosis I can easily say that it's hitting her very hard.  I don't bring this up to brag about the three of us who went out there, but to brag about the Principal.  He knows every single one of these students so well.  He knows their parents, their living situations, their health problems, their social problems, just everything.  He is also obviously the kind of man who the children look up to and talk to about what makes them happy or sad or excited.  He said that he was offered to be the Principal of a nicer school with over 600 students, but he turned the offer down because he felt that he wouldn't be able to reach the same personal level with all those students that he wants to.  He is absolutely amazing

     One of the best parts of this class is that Grant's mom makes us lunch every single Monday and Friday.  The food is SO GOOD!!  Today it was almost like a shepherds pie, but it was as if someone who spent half their life in India and half their life in Africa made it.  After lunch we got with our groups and started planning the lesson for Monday.  I will post all about the lesson on Monday and since Tyler has been nice enough to allow me to talk him into writing some stuff on the blog he will be willing to write about his.  We didn't do a whole lot after that.  We went over the class outline in detail and talked about what our assignments will look like.  There is no final in this class, so we will be done on May 18th.  So, to wrap it all up, the class ended, we got on the bus, went home, and now we are just laying on the bed.  I don't believe anything else exciting is going to happen unless we skype tonight.  Tomorrow we will sleep in and then go to the historic downtown Stellenbosch.