Skip to main content

House by the beach

I am staying by the beach. It is kind of a dream house, a varanda to the sea, a little kitchen and nice fresh wood blinds. It makes it look amazing. Well, it is amazing, but it is not summer here. The last couple of nights me and Isabel do not let go of our little blankets when we are in the leaving room given the air current is so strong. The fact that it does not have windows makes it very fresh in the summer but kind of windy and cold in the winter, i.e. now. Not that it is Boston winter. It is kind of 20 degrees, so it is not bad, but the fact that wind comes in through every window makes it very funny. It always makes us laugh, especially when we try to sleep and we think the roof may fly away at any point in time!
Yesterday and today I thought a course about teaching 3-5 years old. No you are not mistak, I never thought children this age. But the mere fact that I had good teachers throughout my life topped with a teaching book from a former volunteer are enough ingredients to be able to teach here. I always end up surprised with the things I get to do here. But it is interesting, it puts you to the text, makes you learn and develop new skills and eventually makes you help a lot. People here teach by repetition and memory. Their memory is bad because their nutrition is bad, which means they don't learn. Therefore, if you try to help them teach differently, with games, songs, and different parts of the brain, things can really improve. It was a different experience but one that I liked and that I know will matter. That makes me happy.
And tomorrow I go to the food distribution for 100 children, it has been a year since the last one, I trust I will see many improvements. I will hope to have internet to be able to tell!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Time is what makes us different

I heard what is likely to become one of my top 3 favourite quotes on a podcast on Friday. "Time is the only real democratic asset. We are all awarded the same time, it is what we do with it that distinguishes us".  Now, I recognise that most of us need to work with survive and that is not democratic throughout. But on an equal opportunity basis, this is an interesting way of putting it. For many years I did not understand why MS thought my resume was so interesting. In fact, they chased me during the entire recruitment process, even though I had no idea of moving to London or Finance. I wanted to be a consultant and stay in Lisbon forever. But traditional consultants in Portugal saw nothing in me, and MS did not let me go. When I started screening resumes and hiring people a couple of years later is when I understood why I was different. TIME.  I was truly different about what I did with my time. Not necessarily the basics - choice of degree or anything. But really ...

Short one: D-Day

It is D-Day today :-) I took out the braids, and the clock is ticking. Bernardo will be in Maputo in two hours. We have plans for the weekend and so much to catch up on. I doubt I will be blogging soon, hehe

Blogging

I have not written in a while. As I hit the bottom I was afraid of what might come out and what might be registered in the web for eternity. But it does not matter. As I go through this stage I know that writing is probably one of the best things I can do, and keeping things inside one of the worst. And short of re-starting my book (or books) any time soon, as they feature about 27 in my list of things I wish I could do, this is just as good.  People used to write diaries, now they blog. I reas on facebook that people used to be upset if someone read their diary, now they get angry if no one reads their blog. It is a funny phenomena. I must say that most of times I think no-one is reading, so why bother, and even those reading won't miss it amongst all other things they surely read. But then a comment comes through, an email reminds me of something I wrote and I know that someone out there comes and visits my home away from home. For good or bad :)