Alden's first day of school

The other day, we had our first day of school. My dad and mom dropped us (along with six others) off. Willow was nervous, I was excited to see all of my other friends. When we got there, my friend Kemely showed me the way. We are in a different building this year, so she had to show me everything. I met our teacher, and he is very nice. When the (handheld) bell rang we lined up for morning prayers. First, the teachers led us in a prayer (that I did not know). I tried to catch on. Next, we sang all of these religious songs. Most of them just talked about Jesus and God and how we always needed to be faithful to God. Again, I didn’t know any of the songs, so again, I tried to catch on.

After we finished our prayers, we went to class. The first thing we did in class was language arts. We read a passage about an opossum 3 times, and then answered the questions about the passage. Next, she gave us our homework on homophones. We read until the bell rang for snack. I ate and shared my sunflower seeds. Then, the bell rang saying that we had to go back to class. The next subject we had was math. Our teacher showed us what we had to do (convert grams into kilograms). I finished quickly.

When the bell rings for lunch, students are allowed to go out of the school gates either to buy their lunch, or go home. When they buy lunch, they go to at least five different little shops. The lunch they buy is normally a soda, fried chicken, and a bag of chips.

It is so different here than at Portsmouth. This school is way less structured. In class, the teachers are not very committed to teaching. If their phone rings, they answer it no matter what, and then have a long conversation with whoever is on the other end, even if it is some-one who wants to hang out after work in the village. When the teacher goes out of the room, the kids go CRAZY! They throw the chalk erasers, they play with a bean bag, and they dance around the room.

Being in the school here makes me grateful for how much work is put into having a successful day by the teachers. Not many people know that.