Country Folk Learning to Love Africa!

So, I have been teaching these little first graders for 6 weeks now. They are now starting to understand just how crazy I am about Africa. A little boy found a book about Africa in his independent reading tub and I started dancing around the classroom! My little one that is very in tune with feelings bought African Valentine's Day cards just because he knew I would love it! I have never come so close to taking a child home before! While my class has learned a lot about Africa and Kenya through our morning work color pages and my talking about what is going to happen when I get over there, they have never actually seen a colored picture of what it is like over there. My lovely sister found a National Geographic book that I am starting to use during down time with the kiddies! For some reason, the idea of what was yet to come did not cross my mind... I opened the book to a picture of boys with beautifully colored headdresses and painted faces and what do my little innocent first graders say? "GASPPPPP......THEY ARE BLACK!!!!!!!" This was a very difficult concept for my students to understand, even though we have a black student in our classroom! Oh, and then, they all start pointing fingers at our black student and saying, "hes black too, just like those boys in Africa.... are you from Africa?" HAHA! Needless to say we didn't make it through a whole lot of pictures that day! I really do not understand why it was so hard for them, considering the fact that we did a whole unit on Martin Luther King Jr. and what he stood for AND wrote letters to people in Haiti and talked about the demographical make-up of Haiti. I can not wait to show them the slide show of the kids I will be teaching.
On that note, I received my placement!!!!!!! FINALLY!! :D I will be teaching 4-7 year olds with special needs, in Reuben (my host pop's) school. Knowing that I am teaching such youngsters, I am working with the Kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Robinson, to deepen my knowledge of child development with the babies! I should also hop to learning more Swahili, YIKES! I envision this is where I am going to fall flat on my butt!! Luckily, I am darn good at charades.
I am also starting to collect my presents to take over to the kids and my host family! I have a couple things like IU flags and pins... I hope to hit the jackpot at the dollar store for pens and pencils! I just won a $200 wal-mart gift card for filling out a survey. I can't wait to buy fun stuff for the babies!
Hope all is well with everyone! Be careful with these crazy snow storms. Especially the Randalls out east! Just bunker down for a while, and never underestimate the power of hot chocolate! :D Miss you all so so so much. Hopefully I will here from you soon! All my love!