Today, I had my first English club. It went far better than I expected.

Peace Corps TEFL volunteers are expected to teach 18 classes a week and have an additional English club. Some of the volunteers from my training group have already gotten their English clubs going, or they stepped into a sight that had one from a previous volunteer; they just took up the reins.

I’ve been trying to get mine going since I got here. Unfortunately, I relied too heavily on my counterpart for help with this when I should have just set a time and place myself. My counterpart was far too busy to be overseeing my own projects. Granted, she did suggest a time and place, but it really boiled down to me telling students when to be where (I made a poster for the school, but it seemed to have been lost within a day).

As I said, my English Club went better than I expected. Part of this is due to the fact that more people than I expected showed up. I had seven girls from the tenth grade there, all of which were in the class I had with them immediately before. I may have badgered them a little too much during class, but hey, they caved.

I started off asking them what they wanted English Club to be. I thought it’d be better if they were interested in what we were doing than if I always set the agenda. They said they wanted to learn about American culture. My guess is that they hope for movie watching and music listening sessions.

After the brainstorming session, we moved to a different room so the custodian could clean the designated English Club classroom. There, we played a few games that I picked up at the Camp Excite we had this past weekend. They really liked “Honey, I love you”. It’s a great game if your sole purpose is to laugh. One person is in the middle of the circle and they approach someone on the outside and say, “Honey, I love you. Please smile for me.” Then, the person on the outside must try and say, “Honey, I love you but I just can’t smile,” three times without smiling. If they smile, then they’re in the middle.

I really enjoyed having freedom to have fun with the students. Sometimes the teachers have me stick too closely to the curriculum for it to fun. I hope the students had enough fun to come back next week.