While we were visiting dTan, she took us to the village school. It had around 35 students in grades 1-5. If a student wants to study past grade 5, they have to travel into the city.
[The entrance to the school]
[The school yard where the kids played]
[The school and the classrooms. There were only 2 teachers for the 5 grades, so they move back and forth between classes.]
We taught the kids "The Hokey Pokey", sign language to "Jesus Loves Me", played some games and then shared the Christmas story with them (dTan translated our English into Laos). After sharing about Christmas, which none of them had heard of, we gave them gifts. We had brought gifts for the students with us (pencils, erasers, rulers, mini globe-balls, candy, and matchbox cars/hairbows) and the kids loved them. Even the teachers liked the mini-globe balls... We were able to show them where Laos was and ended up teaching them a mini-geography lesson! Laos was a closed country until recently, so they know very little of the world. One of the teachers didn't realize that South and North America were different continents, so having the globes were very helpful in explaining!
[Playing a simplified version of "Simon Says"]
[Claire handing out gifts]
The kids singing "The Hokie Pokie"
[The 1st graders with their Christmas gifts]
[dTan in the middle, and the two village teachers on her right and left]
The first grade class was a little shy in the beginning. I don't think they knew what to expect, and dTan warned us that the kids might be scared of our pale skin and think we were ghosts! By our visit to the 2nd/3rd grade classes, they all started to warm up. And by the time we got to the 4th/5th graders, all the students from the other classes were peeking through the windows and cramming in the doorways to see what was happening!
After we shared in all three of the classes, we went outside and played with the kids. The students don't have any equipment, so the balls we'd given them became their entertainment. I turned into their circus seal... the kids would lob the balls to me and I'd bounce them off my head. Then we played soccer, but really it was just "keep-the-ball-away-from-the-farang." Getting to play with the kids was really the highlight of my time in Laos. It's awesome how far a smile goes when you don't know the language! I couldn't tell them all about Christ's love, but my prayer was that through the Christmas story and interacting with us, they would begin to understand God's great love for them.
[dTan walking back with the students after their morning classes]
No comments:
Post a Comment