Beef = No More Mooooo

Another day has flown by! Before I left, I thought I would only be teaching a few classes of week and have plenty of time to read, study Italian, etc. Boy was I wrong! I'm glad I'm not bored, but I never imagined volunteering would be this much work.

Having the younger kids divided into two groups went very well. I did an activity on colors for the younger kids. I wanted to go on to a lesson about family when one girl looked at me with excitement in her eyes and asked, "Hokey Pokey?" As soon as she said that, the six other kids giggled happily so I said OK. A few months ago I never imagined I would end up in Serbia doing the hokey pokey with a bunch of 6-8 year olds! The song teaches them body parts in English so I don't mind. Then, since they had too much energy, I taught them "duck, duck, goose." They loved that game but kept saying "juice" instead of goose.

I did a second lesson on directions (north, east, south, west) and the names and capitals of European countries with the older kids. I picked the 10 countries that are most relevant to Serbia and we learned their capitals, their names in English, the language that they speak, and where they are in relation with each other. At first it was hard for some of the kids because this might have been their first time looking at a map. Maybe I'm biased because I was a geography major, but I think its so important to know about your surroundings - especially if you live in Europe! The kids enjoyed questions like, "what country is north of Hungary and south of Poland?" The boys are competitive so it was like a game for them.

We had a lesson on food terms tonight. An apple is an apple just about anywhere in the world. Meat is another story. People prepare meat differently all over the world. So for beef, pork, and chicken, I put a clipart image of the animal next to an image of the meat. When I got to beef, I pointed to the picture of the cow and said "moooo = cow" "no more mooooo = beef." The one lady really starting laughing which made everyone else laugh. I will be starting a new class for adults tomorrow. My total number of classes keeps growing and growing.

I finally got to meet Liljana's son tonight. Both her and her son speak English, Serbian, Slovak, and Macedonian. How cook is that!?