-----Teaching in Namibia-----: Tuesday the 8th: The End of College

I awoke on Tuesday morning to find that my professors had not yet read my final papers, but that they had received them.

A few highlights from Tuesday at school:
-When doing long subtraction here, they don't call it "borrowing" when you have to go to the neighbor number to get more in order to subtract for example in the problem:

123
-106

in the states we would say you go to the 2 and borrow a ten to give to the 3 to make it 13. Here instead they call it "taking" because if you are "borrowing" that means you have to give it back, and in subtraction problems, you don't give back what you "borrow". I thought this difference though subtle, was interesting.

-When learners were waiting for Mrs. Emma to gather some things to give to them, they had me "autograph" my signature of Miss Veronica Whetstine in the back cover of their maths exercise books. They were so happy about it, so I didn't tell them it was silly, I just quickly wrote my autograph about 10 times as if I were a celebrity ;)

A few highlights from Tuesday at the children's home:
-The kids thought it was hilarious to have Jessica and I "read" out of a book written in Afrikaans. We tried our best to pronounce the words as they looked, but I'm sure we were no where close, but that didn't matter as the children and house mom alike were literally rolling with laughter.

-I helped Gavin with his homework today. He is generally a very shy little boy, and he doesn't speak very good English, but he has gotten quite comfortable with us and has opened up a lot. This day, we went over the alphabet, read a short, simple book in English, and did some math problems. He was working on adding two simple numbers together. When presented with a problem, he instantly took out his fingers and started counting. He did okay with that, but then I remembered touch dots (a math teaching method) and decided to try it with him. I was able to show him how to do with using very little English. I modeled how to solve a problem and then motioned for him to try. He caught on quite quickly and enjoyed our time solving problems.

That night for dinner we hit up the Texas Ranch House by Casa for some sweet burgers, chips (aka french fries), and onion rings complete with plenty of Tomato Sauce (aka Ketchup). When we returned from dinner, I found an e-mail from my professors with feedback about my final papers. I saw then that they were online and double checked with them that the final grade had been turned in and that I was finished with everything. They said it was all done and at that moment, I was all done. College for me (at least my undergrad) was finished. What a crazy flush of emotions I experienced at that moment. My four and a half years of life flashed before my eyes, the good times, the tough, and the craziness of it all. Wow, it seemed like freshman year had just began yesterday, but at the same time, it seemed like forever ago that I was off to the U of I. Some of me was glad it was done and other parts were sad. Hard to describe all the conflicting feelings that are present in a time like that.

The Afrikaans we were reading, have a try yourself :)