Trudge Through Thursday a Minute with Me

Day 4 of my week-in-the-life challenge: Thursday

Thursdays are rough.  They follow worship night which means we all wake up having not had enough sleep.  Then, with not enough sleep, Owen has to go to school for the full day, and Bill & I teach the full day.  Owen rarely naps at school, though they are made to lay down for an hour or so, which makes for an even longer afternoon/evening for us at home.  But let me stop complaining and get on with the post.

Oh and also - WHY is September almost over already?!  Sheesh.
But sorry... there aren't many photos from today for the aforementioned 'tired thursday' reasons.  :)

We are the school bus in the mornings, picking four kids for school - Owen always has lots of fun with the two kindergarten boys he gets to ride with.

It was our first day picking up this sweet girl, she's super shy and doesn't speak much English so I walked her to her class.  At one point I stopped to make sure Owen was coming and she wouldn't go more than three steps away from me.  Such a sweetheart.

This boy is slowly creating a space in my heart.  He's from Korea and came to school not speaking any English or Swahili.  Because of the language barrier (and other things, I'm sure) he was a huge behavior problem, disrupting the class all the time and refusing to do anything or even try anything.  Today I snuck a picture of him writing during writer's workshop.  I have taught the kids how to write a story with a beginning, middle and end by sketching a quick picture and writing a sentence under it.  Then he held up us book proudly, saying "Me! Swing!" (sorry that one is so blurry, I SO wish it had turned out but I was only pretending to hold my phone in my hand so he didn't know I was taking his picture) He still has his moments, but he's grown leaps and bounds since school started only 2 1/2 weeks ago!

After that class I did some grammar centers with my 4th/5th graders.

During my break I organized.  I like organizing.  A lot.  I made labels and I sorted and everything was nice and tidy and put in it's place when I was finished.

Also I really have a problem with how much I like these cute, colorful, 5-pocket expandable files.  I should have brought more.  There really is no excuse for not having brought more. They were cute, only $1 at Target and weigh almost nothing.  What. Was. I. Thinking. 

After school we went to Highway supermarket.  It's one of the bigger supermarkets we tend to get our bread from here and some pantry items are cheaper, and they also have a decent selection of (cheaply made) toys.  Plus it's right by school so we don't have to go all the way into town.  We arrived and promptly were surrounded (three wazungu girls) by 3 or 4 Tanzanian boys ready and willing to help.  Sheesh.  The dadas (sisters, girl workers) there know me by now but these guys must be new.  They were all up in our space.  Anyway, we let Owen pick out a birthday present for his friend's birthday this weekend and took off for home. 

And that, my friends, is where the photos cease.  When we got home it was bath time, which typically is fine, but when he's overtired it's a fight.  A big one.  So the rest of our evening was spent dealing with a very cranky, fit-throwing toddler who went straight to bed after bath with no dinner.  Who then realized his poor choices, apologized, then opted to come eat, and go straight back to bed and chose to loose the privilege of watching shows tomorrow.  He was very grown up about it once he realized we'd really put him to bed with no dinner and talked calmly, apologized and was very sweet the rest of the evening.  But boy he wears me out when he's like that.
Sorry, just being real. :)

Tomorrow's Friday - hopefully an uneventful one - will do my best to capture it on camera!
Then stay tuned for Saturday... it's NOT going to be typical and there will be LOTS of pictures... that's all I'm saying for now though :)