Fantastic Friday

Hello, all!  I hope you’re having an excellent Friday thus far.  I, for one, am having a great day.  I’m having an ‘I love Kenya’ day.  Would you like to know why?  Of course you would!  (If you don’t, you should probably stop reading because, if you hadn’t already guessed, I’m going to tell you now.)

My lessons this morning were awesome.  We got finished with our grammar a bit early in standard 8, so I got out the collection of “James and the Giant Peach” books that my mom got in book donations and brought out with her.  They are actually an adaptation that’s a play, but what’s great about them is there are enough so the kids can follow along as I read.  I read the first few scenes, acting it out and trying to make voices for the characters and the kids had a lot of fun with it.  We’ve had a pretty good week in standard 8 in general, what with jazz hands and a grammatical version of Pictionary/Charades.

Then, I was doing my planning for standard 7 and realized that I wasn’t looking forward to teaching at all.  And if I’m not looking forward to teaching, the kids probably aren’t looking forward to coming.  That’s not good.  So, instead of working on our grammar like we’ve been doing, we spent the class period making up actions for our vocabulary words and then testing each other on them.  I may or may not have made up a song about baking that sounds very similar to a song about making a peanut butter sandwich. 

After school I had to make a trek into town to renew my visa, since the wonderful immigration officer at the airport only gave me a month instead of the 90 days I paid for.  I can’t say I was looking forward to this task, but it turned out so much better than I dared to hope.  I asked for 4 more months, expecting them to give me 3 and tell me to come back.  Instead, he kindly gave me 6, which is the longest you can stay without leaving the country.  So now I’m good until January, and it didn’t even cost me extra.  Thanks, immigration officer, you’re my hero of the day.  (Don’t worry, mom, I’m coming home in November, promise.)

After my excellent rendezvous with the immigration office, (which, by the way, I managed to find without getting lost!) I did a wander of downtown Mombasa, which I always enjoy.  Found loads of street food, though I mostly just looked, and bought some produce that we don’t usually get at the house (apples!).  Now I’m just chilling, charging my computer so that I can go watch the synchro finals tonight.  Huzzah!  (I probably shouldn't get too excited about that just yet.  In Kenya, nothing goes as planned.)

At any rate, that’s been my day.  I hope everyone else has an equally wonderful day to take them into the weekend.  Cheers!