The Loreto Day School

So I went to my service learning site for a real day of service learning. I assumed my first real day would be similar to my non-real first day, which may include but is not limited to: tour, informational video, forms, explanation of the routine, introductions, coffee, informational beach volleyball, etc. However, on my first day, I went up to the rainbow room (not named after decorations, but after the girls, "rainbows", that live there. These are the girls who live at the school, but they were taken off the street with no family. They're a great group.) and found my supervisor. She said, "ok, you can help the girls with their homework." So I walked to the middle of the floor, sat down (criss-cross applesauce, in Indian tradition of course) to help the girls. I tutored for the next three and a half hours, mostly trying to get them to do homework while they pretended not to speak English. I have a lot to learn about teaching, but I have the being the goofy friend who makes lots of weird noises part down really well, so that's a plus. Highlight of the day was teaching these two 7-9 year old girls how to read the clock. How cool is that?? They were so excited to learn, and by the end of it, they knew how to read the clock quite possibly better than I can. That good.

I look forward to going back, and getting to know the girls more. The ones I had talked to last time remembered me and were excited to see me, so I think I'll become popular pretty quick. It'll be great to compensate for all of the self-esteem problems I had when I was younger.

I may not be giving solar-powered lamps to poor children like some of the girls on my trip, or doing....whatever, like the other people on the trip, but damnit, my girls are going to enter into a world where no clock is too difficult for them to master, no time unreachable. And at the end of the day, when you can say you've done that, I'd say you can rest easy.