Happy December Everyone! I can't believe that last month of the year is already here.
As you could tell from the photos, I was not in Singapore with my family over Thanksgiving. I went on a short trip to Cebu in the Philippines. It was my second visit to the same place - I also went to Cebu last year on Interim Semester in February. This time I went with a club I'm part of at school that helps the barrio of Maravillia.
I was SO excited to get to go back. I loved every minute of my first trip there. I was not expecting to get to go on this trip as a sophomore, but when a teacher dropped out of the trip at the last minute, a good friend of mine (a Junior who was going on the trip) asked the teacher if I could go. I was so thankful to get to go, as I will not be here in the next two years.
We took a midnight flight to Cebu, and then it was a 2 hour van ride to the house we stayed at. I got a total of an hour and a half of sleep, and then that first day was up until 10. Needless to say I was exhausted. The first day we spent delivering care packages (t-shirts, toothbrushes, etc.) to another nearby barrio. We returned to the house for lunch. There were 2 other friends of mine from my trip in February there, and we were all anxious to see the kids. We asked the teacher if we could go to the school (about a 3 minute walk down the beach) since it was their lunch break. She let us go, so we were able to see some of the kids we met last year. That afternoon we returned to the elementary school to do activities with the kids there. My friend and I were in charge of the arts and craft station. The SAS kids organizing the trip were supposed to have prepared the craft, but didn't really have anything except for a stack of paper, so Kat and I decided to make paper airplanes and have a contest. It didn't really matter what we did - the kids would have loved it no matter what.
The second day we went the the high school to teach. Their high school is really grade 7-10. So I would be a senior there. I much prefer to teach/play with the little kids, as I find high school a bit awkward to teach. But my partner and I ran spelling bees in the classes (about 30 minutes long). The kids had a lot of fun with it, and we ended up having a lot of fun, too.
The third day was the one I looked forward to most, as we were teaching at the elementary school. My partner and I were teaching 3rd grade - with 56 students! I would normally like even younger kids, but we were given the biggest class because we had both been there before. Also, I taught 2nd grade in February, so I had many of the same students, which was really fun, and they were all very cute. My partner, Dineth, is very good with kids. So I wasn't too worried about the number of students between the two of us. Unfortunately, a sickness was going around amongst the SAS students, and Dineth got sick the day we were set to teach. He came anyway, and helped as much as he could. I was able to control the students through most of the lesson. The trouble came when it was time to watch performances. I had a straight line of 56 kids, and was supposed to keep them quiet (since Dineth began to throw up about 2 minutes before the prayer, speeches, and performances began). It case you hadn't guessed, the back of the 3rd grade was giggling throughout the prayer - that may have only been a minute, but seemed to last forever. Nonetheless, the kids were adorable. After school that day many of them were out on the beach, and wanted to play their favorite games - Duck Duck Goose and Red Rover. What that means for me is being continuously getting up and down and running from side to side. Every turn, they always choose 'Teacher Jane'.
The worst part of the trip was that my camera broke! On the first day there it got sand in the lens. So then it wouldn't open. After a while it began to open but not focus. So I hardly got any photos this time. There was another student there who took over 2,000 photos, so hopefully I'll get copies of some of them soon. I'll post them if and when I get them.
I better head off to bed. Busy week coming up.
Miss you all. Hope you're having a great December. Have you had any good snowstorms yet?
xoxo
Jane
