Children.Island.English.Trash.

Every Saturday I get on my bike and ride down to my church in hopes that the children remembered its English learning day. Sometimes they simply forget it’s Saturday. Other times they roll up at 4 pm which is an hour after the time we start.  I have learned not to have expectations on how I think it should look, so I go with a light heart ready for whatever and whoever shows up. I mostly get disappointed when they don’t come because I really love being with them.

Yesterday, there were actually some regular kids plus a few extra girls I hadn’t met before.  Usually I start by teaching them to write some basic, everyday words in English. We have learned body parts for the past few weeks. Each kid has a journal I bought them so they compile all they learn in one place. They keep their English journals at the church each week to make sure they don’t leave them behind at home.

I have wanted to talk to them about the trash on the island and embark on an ongoing activity of cleaning up garbage on our island. So, I brought small trash bags and gave them a little talk about “basura” (trash). It was quite difficult because most of them don’t understand or speak English yet. Amiud (the tall boy in the pictures below) understands and speaks very little so he helped me translate. I really have no idea how it came across to the kids, but I am certain that they understood we were talking about garbage. After the pep talk we walked across the street to a 20′ x 20′ piece of beach. By the end of the 15 minutes we had collected 16 trash bags. We dispersed them between a few trash cans that line the streets and then headed back in the church for charades in English, which they love.