Today we spent most of our day at the Masa Ati school working on the construction project and tutoring the students before beginning the Christmas play for later in the week on Thursday. All in all a great day!
Here is a reflection of the day from two of our students.
“Day 6 in the Philippines began with an early rise for breakfast at 7am. We quickly got ready and headed off to the ferry. We boarded the ferry to the mainland with anticipation building for our first official day at the Ati School. After a long time of travelling we soon arrived at our official welcoming party where kids of all ages sung and danced energetically. As we began our tutoring it amazed me how enthusiastic these kids were to learn, it made our tutoring much more enjoyable. While some students worked on our upcoming nativity performance, I switched between teaching and constructing for the remainder of the day. We then caught the ferry back to Boracay, Mr Norman and Mr Bergin had stayed back to finish the monkey bars. While we waited for them to return we went for a swim at the beach, where we practised launching people as far into the air as we could. Following Mr Norman and Mr Bergin’s return we went out to dinner at a restaurant called Tilapia ‘N’ Chips, I decided to try the local Dory fish for dinner. We walked back to our accommodation under the warm night sky, talking and laughing all the way back. When we returned back to our accommodation we had a quick discussion, particularly on the strange choccy milk Connor and Jurgen had and headed off to our rooms for the night.”
– Jimmy Rowbottom
“Jimmy has already given a recap of the day so I’m just going to write about my favourite part, tutoring the kids. A few of us were allocated to help some of the Year 3s with reading; using books and flash cards. I was actually really surprised about their level of learning and eagerness to understand. We went through a few simple books; focusing on a single letter and flash cards with words like ‘when’ ‘at’ and ‘who’. The children seemed so excited when they got the words right but also listened and were really persistent when trying to understand. The children were genuinely so happy to learn and their excitement was contagious leaving us all with a smile on our faces by the end of the day.”
– Naomi Sharp