I'm "Off Tu" my internship!

Every Tuesday and Thursday I spend 14 hours at Off Tu Mission where I'm doing my junior year social work internship. This involves several differant activities:

*Teaching at Off Tu Academy: They just started a school that is Baby Class (ages 3-4), Top Class (5-6) and P1, P2, and P3 which are equivalent to 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade. Apparently, being an American college student is qualification enough to let me teach classes on my own...I thought they were crazy at first. But I teach Baby and Top class PE, P1 Music, P2 Reading and P3 English. It has been a little overwhelming to be thrown into teaching with basically no preparation, but it has had some funny moments.

The best one yet was in P1 where they are absolutely crazy...especially with new teachers who only speak English. They were totally taking advantage of us (me and the other intern Caitlin) being new and overwhelmed and they were going nuts. The teacher had given us a stick to use (they regularly beat children in school and home here) so I picked it up, whacked the table to get their attention and said "Do your teachers beat you?" they all said "Yes!" and so I said, "Do you want me to beat you?", hoping to scare them into submission but they responded, "YES!" and began sticking their bottoms under the desks and begging me to beat them. It was the last thing I expected and at that point I realized I had no idea what to do.

*Painting latrines: Latrines, aka toilets/squatie potties, don't typically come with a way to wash hands but at the school they have water next to the latrine and they are trying to encourage children to wash their hands. So, they have given Caitlin and I the task of painting a mural on the latrines. The mural says "PLEASE WASH YOUR HANDS AFTER TOILET" across the top, and includes a picture of a girl washing her hands, flies with the message "flies carry germs, watch out!", and a picture of a giant germ with a word bubble who says, "I am Mr. Germ and I like to eat children who do not wash their hands after toilet." It is my greatest artistic acheivement and I am really looking forward to posting pictures of our finished product.

There is more to my life at Off Tu but I am tired of writing now :) I'll explain more later!