Friday, November 21, 2003

Tomorrow marks the three month anniversary of my being a volunteer for the Peace Corps, and a week from next Wednesday will by my six month anniversary in Cameroon. This means I am almost one quarter through my time here. Its hard to believe, but as long as it continues to be interesting, fun and I feel as though I'm helping someone, the time will continue to go faster and faster, I'm sure.

I wanted to talk a little more about the classes that I'm teaching. The school is called "Centre Scholaire" and is only for the children of employees of Alucam, owned by the now Canadian (formerly French) company, Pechiney. I teach two different classes each twice per week for an hour, so I'm there each Monday and Thursday from 3-5pm. Each class has exactly one white french boy and about twelve Cameroonian children for a total of about 25 students between the ages of 9 and 11. This is markedly smaller than the normal class size for that age which is around 60 in public schools- hard to imagine how they learn anything, but discipline is pretty strict.

In general, my kids are pretty bright. I speak English almost all the time, but occasionally translate when its really necessary to understand what I'm saying. Their retention is pretty good, considering I give them about twenty new vocabulary words each class. Yesterday, we learned "Old MacDonald had a farm" and learned the names of some animals. They seemed to enjoy it and hopefully learned something as well. Monday we're going to talk about family and the American holiday of Thanksgiving. Should be fun.