Observations

Every day in the Philippines we get rain. It usually lasts for half an hour or so and last night the internet connection went out so we couldn't tell more about what we are doing.

So here are just a few observations.

It is wonderful teaching here. The kids are really really poor, but they are so eager to learn and they are wonderfully polite. When I meet the younger ones, they take my hand and put it to their forehead. This is a kind of blessing called Mano. I usually work with about six kids at a time, and Elliot and Asa take the same number. When Sterling is here, she helps a fourth group. We start with their school lessons which are usually very abstract, and then we develop some of our own lessons. Yesterday, I asked them all to describe the two largest cities in the Philippines and most did not know. Then I asked them if they knew where I came from and they just said America. Most had never heard of New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago, but several boys did know who Michael Jordan was. The kids here have long attention spans, it is amazing to see anyone every cry or whine. One day we went to the mall and saw a kid crying, and I told Sterling and Elliot that he must be an American. ha ha

The textbooks are so abstract that I had Elliot come up to me one day and ask me what an indefinite pronoun was. I know I should know what that is, but it eluded me and all the adults I asked afterwards. I am sure it is a good thing to know about, but I am not sure if it helped the fourth grade student learn to write better in English or Tagalog. However, I should point out that many of the kids can write very well in both English and Tagalog. So we are spending a lot of time trying to get the students to write stories or descriptions. I am also doing my best to get them to understand what some of the applications of math concepts are.

I haven't told you much about the organization that we are working with. James Kang, Elliot's dad, hooked us up with them last year, and Flor is the person coordinating our activities. The title of the organization is Mission Ministries Philippines, and they work developing "holistic churches, that have a preschool, a drugstore cooperative and a livelihood project ot help finance the church." I have gotten interested in a goat raising project that is being started in Montalban. I am talking with Sterling about how we could integrate the financial aspects of this into the math curriculum there so the kids can see that positive and negative numbers and interest rates are not just academic topics.

Well, I have to get to work. I will write more tonight.

Ayo ayo (That means bye),

-Zeus