At Evang. Luth. School Ansbach

[At Evang. Luth. School Ansbach Video]

Friday morning November 3, started with beautiful snowflakes on my window with the surise.

Later after a typical breakfast here with cornflakes, milk, cheese, bread and cofffeee, I proceeded to the morning devotion at the chapel. Another visiting guest Rev. Schaffer (if I’m not mistaken) the president of the Lutheran Church in Argentina shared the devotions in German based on the scriptures from the Losungen (which I noticed to be a popular devotional guide for German Christians here):

“The Watchwords (German “Losungen”) of the Moravian Church (http://www.ebu.de), well-known in many lands in booklet form, daily feature a word of the Old Testament chosen by lot and a suitable word of the New Testament.”

During the time of welcome and a few words for me .. I could manage .. ” Guten Morgen … Ich Heiße Sivin Kit” to help with connecting with people 🙂

Gerhad Stahl (I put his last name because there are many Gerhads in Germany!) then drove me to a school in Ansbach. Here’s the info on my program about the school.

“In Germany most of our Schools are run by the Government, but some Church Parishes run private schools. The Government contributes money towards those schools, additional money out of church funds and from private donors is involved. The School at Ansbach offers their students a combination of normal morning lessons and after-school-care in the afternoon and during holidays for those whose mothers are at work. The week 29th October to 3rd November is a school holiday, but a group of about 20 kids, age 7 – 11, are staying for their holiday programme. During this week, they decided on “getting to know Malaysia”. You have been invited to top their last day of the Malaysia project.”

The kids were pretty patient with me and well prepared. There was a paper with the questions written asking about food, animals, the games that we play .. I introduced them to our “Wan Tu Sum” – Bird, Water, Stone version of a simple game. Ok I admit, these are different versions of it over the world. maybe that’s proof we are from one humanity? *grin*

I got some stuff from Central Market which you can see the kids having fun in the video above. I showed some pictures of Malaysia from the more developed City as well as the rural areas. They had more of the Malaysian jungle and forest as well as beaches in their mind. So, I guess, giving a more balanced picture is good 🙂

Lunch was interesting because the teacher was explaining Asian fruits to them … like Lychee, Starfruit and Papaya. They loved the fruits. And the teachers shared with me a local Malaysian delicacy the kids tried to cook yesterday – MAGGI MEE GORENG *smile*

[Asian Fruits in Ansbach video]

Later after lunch, We tried to play Sepak Takraw which was more challenging since the kids were little young for leg coordination. So I switch to our classic version of “Monkey” game where they could throw the ball around with some kids in the middle trying to catch or block the ball. It was lots of fun.

For me, it was a little learning curve as well to adapt to the younger kids. Language was a challenge but we had a great time connecting .. some of the kids tried to speak English which was fun. Gerhad did a great job translating. And for short attention span kids they did great!

Before Gerhad and I left, we had some further conversations with the three teachers with Cappucino and some cakes.

One thing I loved about the kids were their initiative to volunteer and their participative nature. It was interesting to talk with a young boy and he shared how he prepared his food in his lunch box. He was really bubbly and was full of energy for discovery. Cecilia who was sitting next to me during lunch really devoured the Starfruits! Going to this school brought back lots of memories of my time as a child in England and the joy of learning that I cultivated there. It will be tragic if our Malaysian education system continues in “achievement-based” mentality and lose out the most important thing I believe for a child – the desire to discover, learn, probe and be creative as a growing human being. And to see the “Wonder” in their eyes to new and even foreign things is rewarding!