Day 5 - Bye Bye Baby

Today was my last scheduled day with the babies *cue tears here*... actually not yet!  The school is so small and intimate that I know I'll still see my littlest lovebugs over the next two weeks.  (Only two weeks left?! Anybody else feeling like time is flying by?)
Yesterday evening I went to town in a mission.  My goal was to find toy cars, crayons or markers and tape. I had seen a cute activity on Pinterest where you tape a colouring device to the back of a toy car and let the child "drive" it over paper to make a picture. How cute right? I was thrilled to find everything I needed at Nakumatt (local Walmart-ish type store but on a smaller scale).
I was a bit bummed when I got home and realised the tape was that cheap not-really-sticky tape. My teacher friends will know what I mean, the one school supplies you with as if it's God's gift to your yearly supply stock but it's so worthless you'll give up a week's lunch to buy real Scotch tape to replace it. I tried but I couldn't get the crayons to stick to the cars. Anyway, this morning I came to school with two boxes of crayons and a few sheets of chart paper. Instant success!
There were less than a dozen students in class when I arrived so I gave them each a crayon and sat them on the floor around the chart paper.  They were so cute!  Even Angel got in on the action! I put a few extra crayons in the middle for them to share and change their colours, but we're still working on the sharing aspect. ;)
The teacher wrote a few numbers on the page and pointed them out to some of the students. Inspired by that I quickly did up a chart that said "numbers" in my worse handwriting EVER and the numbers from 1-10. Knowing that I couldn't afford to waste the paper, I tried to ignore the fact that title was below my own standards. The teacher seemed to like it.  She taped it on the wall and one by one I had some of the students come up and review numbers with me. As the class started to fill up I also went over body parts with them on a one by one basis. The crayons were packed away and the balls were brought out for indoor play.
I took a few photos of the students - well, I tried to.  They were all so eager to see themselves I couldn't get any good photos.  They much preferred the front facing camera and they ALL wanted to be in EVERY picture.  I have a few cute (but blurry) ones to share with you.
Soon it was time for porridge. At least I thought it was.  On Fridays the children have tea and scones.  A few of the students still had porridge sent from home.
After snack it was time for me to have tea with Evarist and the volunteers. It was Karen and Maddy's last day so it was a little sad for them.  I remember my last day in Thailand so I completely understand. Today we had samosas with our tea. They had ground beef inside and were served with lemon and lime wedges.  It was a nice mixture.
I had fun playing with the children after tea.  I was finally able to get a group of them  to sit in an almost-circle and throw/roll the ball to each other.  Sweet success!
I tried to take a few more photos but the results were the same.  I'll see if I can go back with my camera during the last week of placement.
I was helping prepare the lunches when Papa John arrived to pick us up.  We were heading back a little early to prepare for safari. The volunteers who were finishing up today were not happy about leaving early and I don't blame them.  I felt we should have left as close to our scheduled time as usual. I had packed my things the night before in anticipation of a short turnover time between arriving home from placement and going out on safari.
It's a shame that some of the volunteers are finishing up this weekend.  They seemed like really cool people and I would have liked to hang out with them a bit more. Since we are on the safari all weekend they'll be gone when we get back. Well... that was the first part of my day. Up next- an evening with the Maasai!