Thank you Woodrow Wilson School!

So my lovely childhood friend Heather is a 4th grade teacher. We've been doing a pen-pal program throughout my service. It's been sort of frustrating trying to do it from this end with school NEVER being in session (we were three months late in starting and then the teachers decided to extend their vacation on top of that...) Heather's been fabulous though, and the bulletin board of ME is the greatest ego-boost I'll ever come across. She's got her kids thrilled about the program, (one girl wrote to me that "this is the best thing I ever done") and even raised $600 for books and school supplies for my little village school! Unfortunately I was only just able to coordinate the giving-ceremony, due to afore-mentioned lateness. It's really exciting because they had no books and the kids don't even really get the concept of books. They see me reading all the time and are baffled by how much I "study." It's a completely unknown concept for someone to read because they enjoy it and in order to wind down. Hopefully we'll be able to make these books come alive; I've started planning a play of one of them to show them that it's fun.

Of course, once the kids saw the books filled with pictures, they were anything BUT turned-off. They were thrilled-- it was like I had boxes of money or cookies or something. They were fighting over them and shouting at each other to come look at this! Amazing...

taking the supplies to school

The penpal class all got their own pouches of American-quality supplies. If you think back-to-school shopping was exciting for us, this was a whole new level! They've never owned anything like this before... I think it puts great exciting emphasis on school-work!

Some of them had never seen a book; none of them have one of their own.

They kept holding them backwards and upside-down at first...

A book on Senegal! Heather picked out some really great ones.

What's a dinosaur? They also didn't know about other animals, planets, and the human body. They kept asking if the body system pictures were of dead people. They said the Skeletal system profile picture looked like my favorite brother, Balla. Sadly, it's quite true...

This is what a teaching tool is like!

MY BEAUTIFUL WORLD MAP, THANK YOU VERY MUCH

Where do our penpals at Woodrow Wilson school live?

Drawing pictures to send back to Heather's class.

Note the Obama buttons I also gave them (courtesy of my [real] father)

My counterpart celebrating with our cross-culturally shared pastime. (This is one of my favorite guys; I don't think I could have gotten through my peace corps service without him. I DEFINITELY wouldn't have gotten as much done!)

One of the teachers. They are all in love with Heather.

I forgot to get a photo of myself with the kids before they went home...

Giving sincere thanks. It's an amazing thing that Heather's done, getting all her kids excited about fundraising for kids in Africa. They aren't the rich Americans my village kids might imagine they are, but brought in their pennies and pulled so much together only because of the enthusiasm she inspired in them. This was definitely one of my favorite projects from my entire service. Thanks to my best friend for doing so much across the ocean!