Africa, who knew!

Who would have guessed that there was snow in Africa!  I had a surprise outing from my friend Andrew on Monday.  He is here filming a movie called "The Forgotten Kingdom"  He took me to some of the places where he has been filming and we we where stopped on a snowy mountain with an amazing view.   One of the best parts of the adventure was stopping in a small village and playing the Lesotho version of duck, duck, goose.  It is Catse, catse (cat), Njha (dog).  The children came from all over the village to play with us. They were so happy to just say "hi" and they loved to see their pictures on the camera.  Thanks for a great day Andrew, I can't wait to see your movie with beautiful footage of Lesotho!

School was very fun this week.  I was able to continue the morning yoga program and I will do a little workshop about the benefits of it for the teachers next week.  I have moments of ups and downs here.  At times I get frustrated because the pace and instruction is so much slower than I am used to.  I see students kind of hanging around a lot and I think that time is being wasted.  I am so used to maximizing the time of our students at home to help them overcome gaps, but here it is different.  Everyone takes life at a slower pace here and I think that it is better in some ways.  The students here have far less stress, tantrums, anxiety and overall they seem very happy.

The other day I was looking for one of the classes that I wanted to spend time with.  They weren't in the room and then I saw them sitting out in a field.  At first I thought that they were just sitting there and thought "why aren't they in class"  As I got closer I was pleasantly surprised.  The teacher was teaching the students how to weave with grass.  Not only is this a great fine motor activity, but they were able to make their own jump ropes and then engaged in a great social activity.  This skill will be much more useful to them in their lives back in villages than learning some academics they might not ever use.  This was one of my ups!