We’re trying this whole rhyming scheme week by week, but I don’t know if we’ll get much further with it (if you have suggestions, let us know!).

Week Two aka our first week of teaching went extremely well. We celebrated Arrival Day last Sunday with our friends in the community, tried various curries and enjoyed phenomenal dance and music at the Everest Cricket Club. We began in classrooms on Tuesday May 7th and had a great first day at the Adult Education Association (AEA), St. John’s College and Mae’s Primary School. Over the course of the week, our teaching pairs (which change daily) conducted formative evaluation and needs assessment in each of their classrooms, asking students what health topics they were interested in learning about and gauging prior knowledge to build off of moving forward. On Wednesday, we began our strength and conditioning training with the U15 Everest Cricket Club, which we coach every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Everest has partnered with us to provide their players with health knowledge on and off the field, and we are excited to continue working with the team over the next 5 weeks.

All of us are enjoying the energy and tenacity of our students in various classrooms, ranging from Grade 6 to Grade 10. After each lesson, we give the students an opportunity to submit anonymous questions to our Question Box. This can include questions about the lesson, us, Canada or anything they want to know. Some of our favourite moments this week have been reading back the questions students have. Many include: “What is Canada like?”, “How old are you?” and “Can we go on a field trip to Canada?” while others have been drawings of us with our students and questions about the content or clarification. We are excited to address these questions in their major themes at the beginning of our lessons this upcoming week.

Hannah and Nick returned from Essequibo on Wednesday and gained valuable insights about the community and region from partnerships with Aspire and with the Ministry of Education’s Regional Education Officer. We said one final goodbye to them on Thursday morning before they departed for Canada. We thank them both for the incredibly hard work they’ve put into making this initiative amazing for us and our communities in Guyana.

This weekend, we are taking some time to explore Georgetown and its many amazing attractions and communities. We went on a run and worked out in the National Park, Alexa and Sarah went to the zoo, while Avery and Georgia grocery shopped, and meal planned for the upcoming week. We then went to facilitate a discussion on mental health with the Guyana Table Tennis Associations’ youth team. This morning, we went to the Cricket Club for the Indian Premier League Finals with the Mumbai Indian’s winning the title just a few minutes ago!

This afternoon, we are celebrating Mother’s Day with the amazing women who take care of us here in Guyana! Gillian, Leorta, Suzanne and Natasha run Rima’s Guest House, where we live, and are incredibly kind and warm souls. However, we haven’t forgotten to call our own Mum’s back in Canada!

Wishing all our Mum’s and readers a very Happy Mother’s Day!

Chat soon!

G-Town Gals

Avery, Alexa, Georgia and Sarah