Day 114,

Day two of teaching small children to read and slightly less small children to read better and do math.  

Had to comfort one kid from the outskirts that wasn’t used to being away from his parents for this long.  To keep myself from freezing up and just standing there awkwardly I wound up taking a page from Lin’s book and getting all detached and professional.  Calmly reminded him that this wasn’t permanent, that his parents will be back on market days, that they’ll be proud of him for learning, and that this is a chance to make new friends.  Almost certainly not the best approach, and I came away feeling like I’d done a bad job of helping him feel better, but he wasn’t fighting back tears by the end of it so that’s something.  I pulled his aunt aside for a minute when she came to pick him up.  Hopefully she’ll be able to help him adjust better than I could.  

In other news, while I thought I’d mostly gotten through my own literacy issues arising from outsider translation weirdness, it turns out that misspellings and malformed letters throw me through an unexpected loop.  I tried to hide it from the kids as best I could but told Cass about it.  We’re going to be trying to work on that in the evenings after the kids leave.