First Week in a Nutshell

The first week of English Camp has come and gone and what a week it was!

This first week we had a team of 13 come from New Mexico! They were such a blessing, they all came with hearts ready to serve and hands willing to do whatever was necessary to help out. Whether it was: fixing toilets,working in a hot kitchen or teaching classes they showed up with a smile and whatever tools they needed, such a blessing.

At 8:30 every morning roughly 400 children came through our gate, formed a line, received hand sanitizer as they walked across the yard to the second gate where they're given a banana, water bag and hard boiled egg for breakfast. They are then separated by age into 8 different colored groups around the pool with boys on one side and girls on the other. Ages range from 5-14 and each child is given a bracelet with their name and the color of their group. Once everyone's seated Andrew leads everyone in exercises, songs, the Bible verse for the day and then we act out the Bible story for the day. What this consists of is interns and team members volunteering the night before, being told what the story is and then acting it out as Andrew tells it the next morning having wrapped themselves in huge pieces of colored cloth and not really knowing what Andrew will have them do. It's been a lot of fun and we've had some pretty hysterical impromptu acting. Once the Bible story is finished we review the Bible verse again, announcements are given and then the quietest groups are dismissed to their first class.

There are four classes that the children rotate throughout the day: Bible, Science, English and P.E and those are also split into classes for the younger and older students.

Andrew, had assigned all the interns places before the team arrived. Some of us as teachers and others as group leaders. There are 10 interns all together, including Andrew, all from different part of the States. I had put the P.E curriculum together the week before camp and got to be in charge of younger P.E which I was SO excited for because I knew some of my preschoolers would be in those groups and after not seeing them for what seemed like forever, my heart was beginning to ache to wrap them in my arms again and see how they were doing.

As my first group came of little girls ages 5-7 my heart lept as I recognized sweet little faces and they ran into my arms. Ah, bliss. We started by playing a name game where a ball is passed around and whoever catches is has to do a little dance or make a funny face and say their name, everyone repeats their action and their name and it worked for the most part. However; most of the names I could not pronounce and interestingly enough hearing 40 children's names once one right after the other doesn't really help them stick in your head. But we had fun nonetheless. Afterwards we played Duck Duck Goose, interesting fact you might not know about Ayiti is that; it's dusty.

No seriously. It's REALLY dusty. And the layers of dirt and dust on the concrete make it as slippery as ice sometimes and running around a circle doesn't help. So with the next group, boys 8-9, I had them sit in a circle and when they chose someone to be goose both had to run and touch the wall and on the way back the person could try and tag them; took a couple tries but they got it and had an absolute blast with it!

After the first 2 classes lunch is served to the younger classes around the pool while the older classes do crafts. Lunch is a banana, mangoes and then depending on the day; hotdogs, peanut butter and honey sandwhiches,spaghetti or egg sandwiches with a glass of ice cold kool-aid.

Groups are switched and once everyone's finished it's back to class.

After the last two classes finish the kids assemble around the pool, announcements and points are giving out to each of the teams before the children are then dismissed for the rest of the day. Points are given by teachers and group leaders; at the end of the week the group with the most points wins a pool party!

So there you have it. English Camp in a nutshell. More stories and photos to come!