getting adjusted.

Today was much different than the previous ones, and I am beginning to feel more settled.

I started the day by helping out at the international school where Abby teaches. It is a Christian school, with children from all over the world, many of them missionary kids. In Abby’s class there is an Australian girl too! The teachers are essentially volunteers themselves. I am probably going to volunteer there every so often, just to give them a hand. And it’s nice to be around some English every once in a while too!

I then took a moto back to the house.. I did it almost all by myself, and this was the first time I rode it when Abby was not coming with me. I felt good about it though. They’re definitely fun.

Then my day with the kids started. A few of them rushed to the gate to greet me, “muzungu muzungu!!” (soon they will all know my name – almost all do!) We sat for a while and they poked and prodded and played their favourite games with me – which include hand slapping, getting me to blow my hair out of my face, or making raspberry noises with puffy cheeks.. you do what you can when you can’t speak to each other.. ;)

When the older kids came home from school, we played a little bit of a language game where the kids pointed to things and said “what is it?” and I responded with the English word – some things I didn’t have names for! Good thing I know “simbiza” – Kinyarwanda for “I don’t know”. This lead to practicing counting in English. They know how to go a little past 20, but sometimes a few get left out.. They also know a rough version of the ABC’s so I’m trying to work on the pronunciation, but it’s pretty challenging once they sing the song – it all kind of just goes back to the way it was. Three of the school kids then got out their homework so I was able to help them with it - they had to copy writing letters that their teacher had picked out. It was good because I could enforce the English way to say the letters, but it’s challenging to correct someone when you cannot communicate through spoken words. But I am hoping that helping with homework can become a regular occurrence.

The kids went to sleep, so I returned to my house, where I helped to teach our guard some English – he was able to look through the Kinyarwanda-English dictionary and pick out words and asked me to pronounce them, so he could then write down the pronunciation in terms he would understand. He has asked me to teach him again tomorrow. I like that I can be helpful, and it’s something to fill my time while the kids sleep. His English is broken, but I communicate fairly well with him.

I went back for dinner time with the kids – they ended up watching a Hillsong kids DVD for the second time today which was pretty entertaining.

So overall, I’m beginning to adjust and to figure out a schedule. This will most likely change when the big kids come at the end of October, but I am looking forward to having other people in my house and having more people to communicate in English with.

Thanks for your prayers – they are working, and I pray (and ask that you pray) that I continue to move forward, and not take any steps back. There’s still a lot of thoughts and emotions rolling around in my head, but the nausea and fight not to cry on a consistent basis is leaving rapidly.

Thank you again,

-Bronte.