We've Regressed...

This morning MB took Rodney to school to sit in on a fourth grade class, and then afterwards spent three hours home schooling him at the BNC. Apparently the first two weeks of school are all athletics, to sort of slowly move into classes, and so MB can teach Rodney for two weeks without him missing classes. She left our house at 7am this morning...It's 8pm now here, and she still isn't home. Honestly, I don't understand where she gets the energy to wake up every morning.

I spent a good five hours reading today, this morning and evening combined. I have 50 pages left in What is the What, and I think I'll read Into the Wild next.

We got to the center earlier today, mostly because we were a bit late yesterday, and also because there happened to be a taxi right across the street who was free to take all four of us. Yesterday it took at least twenty minutes to find a taxi.

When we arrived at the BNC, MB and Ruben (an employer at the BNC, usually gives out the soup) were taking down children's names, ages, schools, and grades, I think so that they can receive uniforms and school supplies. I took over for MB so that she could control the rest of the usual BNC early afternoon chaos. The list ended up with more than 100 names. It was really unorganized. The kids would give Ruben their names and ages, and he would write them down, and my job was to copy the names and ages off of his sheet, and then they would come over to me and tell me the name of the school they attend and their class. But after telling Ruben their names, most kids just ran off before I got the rest of their information. Plus, a lot of the schools have odd German names that are impossible to spell, and it was so loud that I could barely hear what the kids were saying to me.

After that I grabbed Rodney and we continued studying. He worked really hard all morning, and I was really proud of him for wanting to continue through the afternoon. But I'm starting to get frustrated with his inability to retain some very simple stuff. I really truly think that he has dyslexia and probably some other learning disorders, because he really just can't get anything I teach him. He can read a good portion of the books Pup and Pop, and a few pages of Hop on Pop, but I think that he has at this point just memorized the books (if I pick out a random work on the page and ask him to read it, he is unable to). We started today with just the alphabet again. I asked Rodney to line up the letters in order, and then match the pictures under the letters (a apple, b ball, c cup...etc). He always leaves out "N" and can't always figure out the last couple of letters. Then when it comes for matching the pictures with their corresponding letters, he really struggles. I try and say things like "what is this a picture of, it starts with an 'F', what sound does 'F' make?" but he can never tell me the sounds correctly. Not for a single letter. When we read and come across the word "a", he will sometimes say "the" or "on", never even being able to just say "a". And then, in Hop on Pop, the same sentence is often repeated. He can read it the first time but when the same sentence is on the next page, he can't read it. I just don't understand. I really do think that the reason for his struggling is too complex for me to understand. He tries so hard, and I commend him for his passion for learning and his ability to stick with his studies and work for hours straight, but I am out of ideas on how to help him.

We only worked for two hours, because I could tell he was exhausted and let him play for the rest of the afternoon. Oh, and, funny thing is, I think he really thinks I'm his girlfriend.

After working with Rodney, I saw this nine or ten year old girl trying to get her crying three year old sister off the ground. I just walked over and told the older girl that I would play with the baby for a while. I picked her up and brought her to one of the tables. She couldn't speak English, so I asked one of the kids at the table to ask her what her name was in Damara (their native African clicking language) and I could have sworn she said Beauty, but her sister later told me it is Mooty. She is soooo adorable. I asked her sister to ask her what she wanted to do/what was wrong/was she sad in Damara, and Mooty told her sister she was hungry and didn't want to do anything. I carried her to the sink to get a drink, and then brought her to the playground. She didn't want to play, so I took a few pictures of her and showed her, and that kept her happy for a while.

Then I saw two girls in a group of children crying, and walked over to see what was wrong. The kids "fake cry" a lot to get attention, so I wasn't overly concerned. Eventually I convinced Princess (yes that is her real name) to come talk to me at the table (I still had Mooty on my hip at this point) and she told me that one of the older girls had hit her when she asked that older girl not to beat up her friend Emogene. Princess wanted to be alone for w while, so I asked Emogene to come talk to me about what happened, and she told me the exact same story. I didn't do anything about it though, because I told her we should talk to MB about what happened, and she told me she was fine, laughed, and returned to the group of kids, with her arm over her face, pretending to sob. The kids play so roughly, often wrestling and hurting each other for fun, and it's hard to tell when they are serious or kidding.

Mooty was still on my hip, and so I went to sit on the wall with her. I was watching a group of girls playing cards when a woman from the BNC office walked by, and asked me if she was sleeping. I totally hadn't realized it, but she had passed out in my lap. She slept there for about a half hour. Kirsten took some really cute pictures of her for me! I wish I could figure out how to post them...I'm working on it, I swear!

The day was winding to a close when all hell broke loose, and MB found out from one of the girls that while Ilga and Suzanne were switching computer duty, two of the boys had reached into Ilga's bag stolen her money. Apparently they passed it through the window or something crazy like that, and then left the center. MB left to go find them, but couldn't. Luckily they didn't take her cell phone. But we are all sick of this type of behavior. And it's even just the older kids! The kid who took the money is fourteen! Obviously they know right from wrong, because MB has stressed the "no stealing" rule. I think that they just don't care.

MB gave Ilga the $40 that was stolen, and isn't going to let that kid back into the center, nor pay for his school supplies or uniform. And if he asks, she is going to tell him that he can buy those things with the money he stole from Ilga.

Then there was a bit of a problem with Dios (who was Erica's best friend, and basically favorite BNC child, and ended up asking Erica to hold her bag at the airport, and went into the bathroom and took her money...only ended up giving part of it back to MB). There was a backpack left in the big room during clean-up time and Meroldi was helping MB clean up, and opened the bag to see whose it was, and saw a pack of UNO cards. When they found out it was Dios's bag, MB took him aside and talked to him about it. They were actually his cards, that he had gotten at a grab bag for Christmas, and so he was cleared.

I had pasta for dinner. Again. We don't normally have group dinners (actually, we only had one the first night I was here). I really miss your cooking Mom! :) And I miss the Blazer! It's been like...MONTHS!

I really have some great photos! I'm trying so hard to post them, really I swear!

So Ajay and I were talking about India, and the languages he speaks. He wrote out the alphabet in his language, Malayalam (PALINDROME! so cool!), and it was all swirly squiggles and crazy shapes! Plus, there are 54 "letters", which are actually sounds. So, you would spell my name "Ka" "tri" "na" in the characters that represent each of those three sounds. So weird! And he has a friend who just had a baby. His friend's name is Anu and his wife's name is Priji, and they names heir son Prinu. Apparently a lot of people do that, combine parents names.

That's it for now,
xoxoxo