Difficulties Teaching

       Today was probably my hardest day so far. We arrived back at Bangla Hope safely yesterday, and today was my second day for piano. Lessons started out fine, but my third student started the difficult day. I had narrowed down who I’m going to teach, but there are still 10 students. So in order to not be doing lessons all day, I decided to try and teach two at a time. That worked well for my first two students, Jennie and Bristy, but the next two I’m gonna have to separate. They are Konny and Marissa. Mrs. Waid said recently that Bengali’s are temperamental. I have found it’s true, they are happy with you one minute and then for reason’s not clear, they are not longer happy. Marissa was like that today. When her and Konny first arrived she was very happy and excited. Then as time went on and I was working with Konny, something happened and Marissa was no longer happy. When it was time for her lesson, it took me awhile, but I finally coaxed her back up to our room and the piano. When I got her there I decided we would just play together. We had done this last Sabbath afternoon, so I got out the book that had hymns in it and we picked a song to play. That went pretty well. My next couple students were fine too, then came Joseph’s turn. Now to understand his reaction, you have to understand that this year Mrs. Waid has allowed the children to watch a movie on Friday mornings. They are all very excited about it and last week I had to postpone Danny’s lesson until the afternoon, but Joseph was fine last week. This week I don’t think he wanted to leave. But he came pretty willingly, then when we got up to our room and the piano, he would not sit down and play, he wouldn’t even smile for me. Well okay that isn’t totally true, he smiled when I tickled him, but he tried to hide it, he didn’t want me see it. I even tried bribing him with candy and he wouldn’t even take it. I finally got him to come out of the corner, but then he started crying on me. His crying isn’t big sobs, instead, it’s tears slowing running down his face and a few sniffs. I am someone who sympathy cries, so his crying started me crying. We did both eventually stop and then some of the girls came up to tell us it was time for Joseph to eat. At that Joseph started crying again, which got me crying again and this time it wasn’t stopping. The girls stuck around for a bit, but then Saborna shooed them away. Saborna is the head caretaker and lives across from us. She then came in to find out what was wrong. Now this whole time Joseph had not spoken a word, so I had no idea what was wrong. Saborna then asked him in Bangla, at first he didn’t answer her either. When she did get him to talk, the conclusion I came to was he would like to have his lesson in the afternoon, which I had suggested earlier when I was trying to convince him to play, although when I suggested it he made no appearance that he liked the idea. Saborna then sent him to eat when we figured that out and then she asked me why I was crying. Well besides being a sympathy crier, which I wasn’t sure she’d understand, I start crying harder whenever someone asks what’s wrong, even if nothing was wrong. Today was an emotional day and I had felt like crying earlier and haven’t really cried or been super homesick since I had got here, so maybe I just needed to cry, but how do you explain that to someone who doesn’t really understand English very well. She came to the conclusion that I was homesick and maybe I was a little bit, so I let it be at that. There are times when you just need to cry and I think today was that for me. For Joseph, I think he was sad he was missing out on the movie and that he didn’t play piano at all. I think he was going to try and wait me out and have me send him back, that never happened, but I think next week I will wait until afternoon for Joseph’s lesson definitely and maybe even just spread the lessons out throughout the week, so very few have to be on Friday.