PENDLA!

Monday, February, 17, 2009
We went to Pendla for the first time today. It was closer to what I had expected then I expected. I had been told some things and what I discovered was very similar to what I had been informed it would be like. They put on a show for us in the beginning and it was singing and dancing! You could tell that they had put a lot of effort into practicing! The singing was so beautiful! They would even dance or clap to a different rhythm then they were singing! We received refreshments and were introduced to all the teachers. Then we went and toured the garden. The garden was started by the St. Ben’s/St. John’s group in 2002 and its primary goal is to grow the vegetables for the school, so it can be somewhat sustainable. After the tour we had a loooong meeting to work out all the details. Gary is very good at making sure people know exactly what he expects and it’s good we have every detail ironed out before jumping in, but at the same time I get really antsy when it takes a long time to get all the tiny little details taken care of. We are all paired up in the classrooms so that on a given day one person can be working in the garden and the other still in the classroom. Jenny and I are in the second grade classroom. Our teacher had been at the meeting with us, the students are very well behaved for not being supervised for such a long period of time. The principal is ill and was not able to be present that day which made everything a bit more unorganized. The students were reviewing Xhosa sounds and then taking a spelling test. In between words, we went over the plan for the next day. I asked her if she sings with the students, because I would be very interested in singing some songs with them and she proceeds to interrupt their spelling test to show us! Most of the songs were in Xhosa but we did recognize one – it was Umzi Watcha (London Burning) that we had learned in music class! They tried to sing it in a round and the teacher was frustrated when the students couldn’t do it, but I wasn’t too surprised, rounds are just a little too advanced for the start of 2nd grade.
That afternoon in music class we had a student come in and teach us Xhosa. It is a difficult language to grasp since it includes clicks we are not familiar with and what we learning was a tongue twister! At the end of class we sang umzi watcha in a round! Now I am able to help my second graders sing it! Afterwards, the student said we had caught on quite well and it helped that we were a singing group!

Tuesday, February 17, 2009
We volunteered in the morning. Four hours is a long time. We had a rough agenda of the day, and the teacher was busy with parents so we just started. We counted and pointed to numbers on the chart. Then we did some basic addition problems on the board. They count in English but they say plus and equals in Xhosa. We were also learning parts of the body so we sang head, shoulders, knees and toes. We did the Hokey Pokey as well.

For supper I made a pasta casserole. Measurements are a bit difficult. Not only do we have to convert to metric but we only have once cup that measures 500 mL or 2 cups, but so far everything has tasted delicious.