Dissa Ahdanisa's Stories

Every friday we  have a fun day. It's when the kids do not have their usual English class and volunteers come up with and idea for a fun activity instead. So, Leonie came up with an idea to clean up the barrio, or the neighbourhood and last friday, we had an environmental day at the school. For weekdays, we have around 40-50 kids divided into for different classes, but on friday we only have two. We have the pre-schoolers in the morning and then the older kids after. This Friday, all older kids were divided into groups of three. Each group got a plastic bag (that Keeley and I got from Palí) and in 30 minutes they will have to collect plastic trash from around the neighbourhood. Only plastics, no paper, no leaves, just plastics. Also, they cannot take the trash from their house. Just the one on the street. Sounds fair enough, yea? And the team that fill their plastic bag the fastest will win! To make it more dramatic, I lined them up outside and gave the plastic bag to each...

Te mando esta carta y este corazon. "I send you this letter and this heart" It was sunny and hot in Pantanal, the neighborhood where our school is, and the kids were having their English class with Francis, the beloved teacher. Like other volunteers, I was helping some of the kids finishing their exercise. We went to some tables to sit down and help them if they have some questions. We were doing numbers in English. Francis wrote down some number and the kids had to write it in English. Some kids did know what they were doing, so they came to us to confirm their answers, which mostly were correct. However, some weren't that fortunate. They didn't know how to say the numbers in English, let alone write them down. And José Lopez was one of them. This cute 10 years old boy can write well and understand the what he needed to do to finish the exercise. He can spell 1-10 in english, he can say 100, 200 and other big numbers, but when we mix it, e.g 432 or 215, he ...