I couldn't sleep for the life of me last night. It most likely had something to do with the fact that I napped from 4:30 until 7 due to complete exhaustion from trying to tutor one of my grade 8 math learners how to do double-digit multiplication. I offered her tutoring because I knew that she struggles...but I had never anticipated just how much. After almost 2 hours of trying the same concept from as many different angles and I could conceive of I decided to give it a rest and assign her some work to try and a multiplication table from numbers 1-10 to study. Needless to say, the impermeable language barrier doesn't make things any easier when trying to teach a subject that I don't claim to be masterful of at all. I was at such a loss that I thought I might burst into tears at any moment.

So, I napped...which led me to toss and turn until after midnight, with my sweat-reduction-fan blowing on my face, driving me half mad, and the vague sound of a thunderstorm crackling in the distance. Eventually I stumbled into sleep, for about 5 hours. I got myself out of bed at 5:20, before my alarm went off (there's nothing like actually waking up before your alarm even when it's set for an ungodly hour like 5:30 in the morning and there isn't even a hint of sunshine in the sky yet). On Mondays and Fridays I am expected to be at school at 6:30 for Morning Devotion-the students and teachers gather in the courtyard and a certain class leads us in prayer, followed by the national anthem, followed by a briefing of daily announcements by Mr. Kamati, the principal. Tuesday-Thursday we have morning staff briefings at 6:45...so we are graced an extra 15 minutes those mornings. On top of it being a Morning Devotion morning, I needed to get to my classrooms before my learners did, in preparation for my Valentine's Day themed classes. [On Thursday I cut out 140 red, white or pink hearts and had my learners each write their names on one. I then redistributed the hearts in the class so everyone had someone else's heart, and their task was (using their adjectives that we had been working on the previous week) to write something nice, in the spirit of Valentine's Day, about the person whose heart they had. I then collected the hearts.] So, with my 140 hearts-four classes worth-and sticky wall putty I made my way through the pitch-black, puddle-and-mud-laden field to the school with my flashlight and all of my books for the day and snuck classroom to classroom posting the hearts on the walls. It shoudl be noted that the concept of personalized compliments eluded many of my learners, as there were many hearts that simply had different and creative variations of "Happy Valentine's Day" written on them, but there were some gems as well, including many references to God, random sayings and words that I'm sure were probably(?!) to be taken as some form of compliment, and my personal favourite, a warning to a boy not to "take a girl" on Valentine's Day and get her pregnant because it is very un-Christian and would ruin his chances of doing well in school and having any friends. In hindsight I wish that I has taken pictures of some, because I'm definitely not doing the comedic value of my collection any justice. Regardless, despite my best efforts to arrive early learners were starting to filter into their classes for their morning cleanup and sweep of the rooms, and for my final classroom I had to employ one of my learners to stand guard and not let anyone in until I left. He seemed to get a charge out of it, as I could hear him using my name with authority and barking orders from behind the door.

Long story short, I was exhausted, but it was all worth it; the learners got a kick out of reading all the hearts posted at the back of the classrooms. In class we did Valentine's Day trivia/Jeopardy, boys vs. girls, each team having an English dictionary for clarification of unfamiliar words in questions. Nothing gets kids competitive like a battle of the sexes. It was also a nice break for my poor overstretched brain.

On Saturday the school is having a big Valentine's event in the hostel dining hall from 6pm-midnight...6 hours...of Valentine's Day fun...including prizes and gift-giving, a talent show, games and dancing, and even a beauty pageant complete with judging and, I believe, a bathing-suit component (which makes me slightly nervous and uncomfortable)...should make for an entertaining blog. Yes, I will be taking many pictures.