Seif+Said+Journals

Journal #1: 20/11/2012

Today was the first day we spent with these poor individuals at the orphanage. First, however, we realized that we needed to provide them with some supplies, as a kind gesture of our kind-hearted intentions to help these poor people with surviving in the harsh communities of Cairo. Thus, we went to Metro to buy some basic necessities. To be specific, we actually bought 2 chicken, 10 kilos of rice, 2 1.5 bottles of oil, some candy, some juice, some butter, and sugar. Thus, after having obtained these vital objects, we decided to take what we had just bought and deliver it to the orphanage.After arriving at the orphanage, we went straight to the office of the head of it, a former military general, Ahmed El-Bashir. He thanked us very much for this kind gesture and kindly accepted our offer. Then, he talked to us about education in Egypt, and what his primary motives were for the establishment and development of this orphanage. He claimed that he simply wanted to offer these children, who lack any parents to supply them with the necessary educations and funding for them to get a proper education. He also revealed to us how education in Egypt is different from our international education. He claims that we receive a type of education that allows us to broaden our horizons and allows us to eventually make a living outside Egypt and be successful. Egyptian education, on the other hand, is rather pathetic and simply teaches them material that will rarely benefit them in their future careers. With that having been discussed, we agreed upon an appointment every week, 2 o’clock Saturday, to come and actually start working.

Journal #2: 21/1/2012

Today, we again went and visited the orphanage. As I revealed in my previous journal, we had agreed with the head of the orphanage to pay the kids a visit once every Saturday at about 2 o’clock. As for this day I got to know all of the children and I worked with them all. We started out reading out words for them to write and whoever got it right was rewarded with candy this made them all eager to work but also to cheat to get candy. So we had to watch them closely so they wouldn’t cheat, and once they all knew how to write the word we taught them what it meant, and after that we taught them how to relate it to a picture or in real life. We would have 3 min brakes between each word and after we review 6 we start over to make sure they didn’t forget anything. At the beginning we told the kids to write the words on a small blackboard but they were not concentrating instead fooling around so we found it better if they wrote in their notebooks.

Journal #3: 24/3/2012

Today, we also headed to the orphanage to continue our endeavors in assisting these poor and unfortunate children in learning proper English. The kids immediately ran towards us when we entered, again insisting to either shake our hands or give us all a high-5. After that great welcome, they invited us into their room, where we would be able to commence our studies. Unfortunately, however, I had just had a session of lifeguard training and was extraordinarily tired today. Today I started working with Waheed while Youssef Rizk worked with all the other kids. Waheed had slowly started learning, as he wanted to reach the level of the other kids. He worked hard and even kept me on task he had a goal in mind and he was not going to stop until he achieved it. Today we started forming sentences with the words they learnt last class. I became more aware of their condition as they do not know a lot of things.

Journal #4: 5/5/2012

Today marks our final day with the children at the orphanage for this academic year of 2011-2012. Again, we entered the orphanage only to find a flood of children wanting to shake our hands and greet us warmly. As was routine, we headed into their room to immediately commence our studies. As this was our final day, we were having a sort of test to see whether our attempts at aiding them in their English had been in fact successful or a failure. Thus, we quickly reviewed the alphabet and some terms, such as plants, plates, Egypt, health and so on (the things we had studied throughout the year). Then we decided to put two of the children together and have them conduct a conversation in English. As we observed how each student performed, we were surprised to see that most of them actually did quite well. They also seemed to be enjoying this a lot. We finished our session for the day, and sat there with the children for 10 minutes talking to them and enjoying our time. When the time came for our departure, we distributed some more candy to each of the students to show our good-bye, and we told them that we would continue to see them next year. Dealing with these children was a completely different experience and hopefully we will continue working with these children next year.