After an exciting Halloween party and talent show that night, I finally began practice-teaching this week. The first week of practice is called Micro-Teaching, and it consists of volunteer students from the area coming to our school daily for English lessons. We taught different levels every day, which our director said was a measure to get us comfortable teaching to multiple different levels of English Language Learners. Some of my students were the kids I play with in my free time, so it was fun to have them in my classroom in a more formal setting. I will say, though, I think they were surprised at how strict I am in class! Next week we'll begin a three-week-long process called Model School at a local secondary school and teach one or two groups of students consistently.
Teaching this week really made me realize how much I learned from working at KIPP in Austin. Because of my experience there, I already know how to create lesson plans, I have a bag full of extremely useful classroom management techniques, and I've worked with English Language Learners almost exclusively! I feel so fortunate to be in Rwanda right now, but I'm realizing more every day how many amazing opportunities I had before I ever arrived here.
For a couple of our language classes this week our facilitators took us out into town to practice our Kinyarwanda. We all go into town pretty often, but it was fun to do it in lieu of being in the classroom. I finally paid a legitimate visit to the clothing area, and all I can say is that I should have gone there a long time ago! In the market they have tons of really nice used clothes from the United States and Europe, and most of them are so cheap! I got four shirts on Wednesday for the equivalent of about $1.50. You have to dig through heaping piles to find the good stuff and get it in your size, but it's fun to bargain with the sellers and move from pile to pile as they shout their prices in Kinyarwanda.
This Saturday we got to travel west to Nyungwe National Park to go hiking. The 3 hour bus ride winding through hills was enough to make me lose my appetite, but it was definitely worth it once we got there. We walked for about 30 minutes through a tea plantation to the actual park, and that in itself was absolutely beautiful! The plants were so green, and in contrast with the blue sky it was breathtaking. After slipping and sliding down muddy hills for about 15 more minutes, we finally reached our destination: monkeys! I don't know how to spell the names of the types of monkeys we saw so I'm not going to embarrass myself by trying, but I will tell you that they were really cute! At one point we were watching about 10-15 of them just hanging out in the trees, eating and playing. As the rain began to fall more steadily, we began the journey back home and stopped in the university town on the way. There's a supermarket there where we get lots of goodies, and a few of us decided to eat in the little restaurant in the store. I had a cheeseburger, and it was so good! Of course it wasn't what we're accustomed to at home, but it had PICKLES! I also bought some Nutella (bliss) and cheese.
In short, Saturday was the perfect complement to a very, very good week.
Happy Birthday (Nov 9) Charity!!!
This is the tea plantation we walked through to Nyungwe National Park.
This was one of the types of monkeys we saw!
These two hung out together most of the time we were there.
If you look closely you can see Lake Kivu. On the other side of the lake is the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 
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