Hi--I've actually got to go teach in a few minutes, but here's a quick update on yesterday (no post due to an untimely power outage and not enough juice in my laptop).
Teaching was regular, with spelling perhaps being a bit more boring than usual--but we're working with smaller groups now, which is good because the kids who come seem to benefit a lot more and will hopefully find these skills useful.
In addition to spelling and Hebrew (we continued the Hebrew months with P6 yesterday!) I talked with Joseph, an elder man for the community who gave me a bit of a taste of how Jewish life has changed. It was really great to talk to an active but more "regular" member of the community--he's the community accountant, though was previously trained (at age 14!) as a mechanic. He told me about life under Amin, where they would gather a few in a room in a house and pray completely in Luganda, saying psalms and biblical passages such as that from Haazinu. (The Torah portion of Haazinu begins with verses in a poem-like structure, which made it a logical choice for chanting.) Joseph sang a little bit of it for me, which was a little hard to catch but still very cool to hear. He also related the struggles of intermarriage which I had heard from others and which remains one of the communities biggest religious issues.
More later!
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