Don't pull the weeds in this studio

When people ask me what I study, I do try really hard to fight the temptation to ramble on and on about physics education research, but you know how it is - sometimes I can't help but let it slip out. And it really is exciting stuff (I like to think); I get to look at the gender gap in physics, and try to work my way through the complex weave of issues that contribute to this gap, with the hope of finding some positive solutions. Specifically, I'm looking at the impacts of physics self-efficacy (which just refers to how confident you are in your ability to do physics) on the success and retention of women in physics. A lot of very fascinating research has been done in this field, and I am quite looking forward to learning more.

So yes, admittedly it just happened now; it really is so hard to mention physics education research without rambling on for at least a paragraph. This blog post, however, is about such a rambling that happened recently when I was talking with a person who teaches in the engineering department. I assumed that as a female educator in a similar field, she would be enthused to hear that such research was going on in a nearby department. But her response to my excitement about self-efficacy was:

 "Oh, well you know, in engineering, our students aren't touchy feely like that."

I didn't know what to say. How could an educator completely ignore study after study done on engineering students showing that they are touchy feely like that?

Through educators who think this way, we have created a "weed-out" system, without taking the time to think about how this affects our students' self-efficacy or the future of engineering as a whole. In this type of system, which views students as disembodied transcript numbers, professors have even been known to say,

"Look to your left. Look to your right. One of them will be gone by Christmas."

Of course, we like to think that in such a system, we are weeding out the academically "weak" students - these students would make poor engineers anyway, right? But I believe that such a system is actually hurting or even eliminating the innovative, collaborative, ethical, and diverse engineers - the very engineers who we need to discover solutions for the challenges to be faced by our changing world.

• Firstly, such a system weeds out students with a strong sense of ethics who care about their fellow student. A student who genuinely cares and tries to help their classmates succeed does poorly because this kind of cut-throat system requires that your fellow classmates to do worse than you so that you can "win". 
• Secondly, we weed out minority groups using subtle and sometimes even overt discrimination as described in Malicky's A Literature Review on the Under-representation of Women in Engineering. We make sexual jokes about women in engineering - we mean it all in fun of course, but objectification can not help but wear down a person's self-efficacy. In lab experiments, a woman can find her role in writing down the data rather than actually using the equipment because of the unspoken assumption that she is not as good at engineering as her male lab partner. Women who do persist in the sciences can find themselves acting more masculine than they might like to blend in. In my observations, the discrimination towards students with faith backgrounds in the sciences is even greater than that towards women. Students and professors toss in jokes or even overt insults directed towards people of faith, often leaving those who believe in God with a damaged self-efficacy and a strong sense that they are not welcome to study the field that they love.
• Lastly, we weed out those with new innovative perspectives. I believe that creativity needs a positive environment to flourish. Any artist will tell you that their studio space is essential in their creative process - some artists need to listen to music, some need to be in nature, some need to be in community with other artists, I need tea, chocolate and natural light - the specifics of the studio differ, but the theme is the same: artists need an environment which uplifts their soul to produce great work. I believe that creativity in engineering design requires the same uplifting environment. How can a "weed-out" atmosphere, in which the constant fear of "I'm not smart enough" plagues many students, be a studio space for engineering innovation?

I think we need to take a step back, study the literature on self-efficacy and the gender gap in engineering and science education, and re-assess the sometimes unspoken, but still prevalent "weed-out" attitude that exists in the sciences and engineering.

Thoughts on Teaching in the Tutorial

I find that teaching does something ridiculous to me. It's similar to the effect of drinking five cups of coffee before entering a ball pit. I sometimes think that if I could step outside my body while I'm teaching, and watch, I'd surely be saying to myself, "who is that?" This afternoon, I found myself quite literally leaping over chairs, acting out graphs with my body, and feeling ridiculously gleeful when my students experienced success in their problem solving. I honestly don't know how it happens; before tutorial, I was really quite tired, but as soon as the students walked in the room, I was on cloud nine. I can't help but wonder, is teaching secretly some form of a caffeine pill?

I'm still on the fence about how effective this high degree of excitement is for student learning. For some students, the excitement seems to be contagious - it gets a positive atmosphere in the room which spurs them on to learn more and have fun while learning. That is of course exactly what I love to see. For other students, however, I'm afraid that it distances them. The student who is really struggling doesn't want to see someone else having a jolly good time doing physics. They need a TA who comes along side them to meet them where they are at, in the emotional state that they are experiencing - a TA who they can relate to. This is of course much easier one-on-one; when a student approaches me individually with a stressed look on their face, of course that automatically changes my approach with them. But in the classroom, I am finding it very challenging to be the sort of TA that each of my very different students need.

We started our first tutorial with a great POE from Tom - the one with three tracks: (A) has a ramp followed by a hill, (B) has a ramp followed by a flat stretch, and (C) has a ramp followed by a valley. They all start and finish at the same height, but their paths are different. It's a fun POE to talk about kinematics, misuse of conservation of energy laws, and how the normal force can change the horizontal velocity when something is rolling (unlike a projectile which has the same horizontal velocity all through its path). The students got right into it! As soon as they entered the room, ten minutes before the start of class, they began investigating the tracks and trying to work out a solution. I love working with these students - you couldn't possibly ask for a better class.

During the first round of tutorials, I used this POE as a stepping stone to kinematics/ dynamics, but I also used it as a way to draw out and validate the curiosity they all have as physicists. Once we had discussed as a class the various possibilities for a little while, I asked them to vote if they would like to actually observe what happens, or just move on to the rest of the tutorial. Of course, all of them really wanted to see what really happens - and made this very clear to me verbally when I pretended to suggest that it didn't really matter. I was able to encourage them to hold onto this curiosity that has gotten them here studying physics. I shared with them briefly about my undergraduate experience - how my learning community of friends and my curiosity and love of learning made undergrad a truly enjoyable and enriching experience. Of course, after all this, we did observe which ball won the race, and everyone was surprised and interested. Three of the students explained why things resulted in the way that they did.

After this, we dove into problem solving. I had used another combination of my supervisor's and Tom's great ideas and cut up a giant sheet of whiteboard material into 2ft x 2ft whiteboards for teams of 3 students each to use to work out problems together. I gave the teams one of two different problems to solve and 40mins to solve them. One of the problems, given to me by my supervisor, was particularly successful in getting the students really thinking:

Before the Golden Gael’s football game this past Saturday, the quarter back was warming up by tossing the football straight up in the air and then catching it again. Determine the percentage of the total flight time during which the football is in the top half of its trajectory.

 I love this problem because there are no numbers! Of course that was the student's first response too: "I can't solve this without any numbers!" It was also a great chance for them to see just how essential it is to have a really good picture and well defined variables with useful subscripts. Of course, all of the groups required considerable support/questioning to reach the solution because it's not an easy problem. A few students came up with some creative approaches too.

After our 40 minutes of problem solving in teams, I had the students find their lab partner (who did the other problem), and teach them how to solve the problem they did. I like this strategy because it requires every student in the problem solving team to have a firm grasp of what is going on. Knowing that you have to teach this problem to someone else really motivated the students to participate in the problem solving.

I had a specific plan for these teaching partners. Last week, I made a lovely colour coded spread sheet to set up optimal lab/teaching partners. We had given the students a diagnostic test on the first day to determine where they were at in their understanding. The spread of overall grades was huge - from 33% to 100%, and everything in between. I took the questions from the test and divided them into questions which tested an understanding of inertia, of Newton's 3rd law, etc. This was a very imprecise science, of course, since most good physics questions require students to synthesize more than one idea, but I did my best. Then I matched students who achieved approximately only a 15-25% difference in their overall score, but scored very differently on the different aspects of the test. For example, I would put a student who achieved an overall score of 75% but achieved 100% on inertia problems and only 50% on 3rd law problems with a student who achieved an overall score of 55%, but achieved 100% on 3rd law problems and only 10% on inertia problems. My thinking was that the lab/teaching partners will be able to teach each other, but neither partner will get frustrated as the one who is always helping the other, since they both have different strengths. So far in the first two tutorials, this appears to be going well. I have yet to decide if the gains have been worth the significant amount of time that I put into sorting the data from the diagnostic test.

The second tutorial followed a similar structure. This time, we started with a brief class discussion about their feedback from an online get-to-know-you survey I had put out to them in the first week. They had shared with me what they love about physics, what they were most concerned about in the course, their plans for the future, and their hobbies (so that I can make them the stars of my tutorial problems). We specifically addressed the top three concerns they had brought up:

1) Keeping up with the workload
2) Maintaining high grades
3) Worries about having an incomplete math background. 

We chatted about some strategies to keep up with the work, maintain high grades without obsessing over grades, and I asked them for their advice with how to bring their math skills up to speed.

Following this, we entered the usual pattern of team problem solving with the whiteboards followed by teaching your lab partner how to do the problem you solved. All this went quite well - they were comfortable with the system, and did a great job solving the problems and teaching each other.

The difference with this week's tutorial was that it also ended with a quiz. I had written a quiz problem that I was really quite pleased with: it was about a student playing piano - one hand is playing a scale (consecutive notes) at constant speed, and the other hand is just starting to play a scale accelerating from rest. The question was to draw a position vs time graph for the two hands relative to the piano, and then to draw a graph of the right hand's position relative to the left hand. The final part was to find the time when the hands met. I thought it was a really fun question - the students would get to combine their understanding of position vs time graphs with their understanding of relative motion, and that would feel oh-so-rewarding. I definitely had my head in the clouds on this one.

The students really struggled with the quiz. One girl was actually shaking for the full half hour and several were visibly distressed. I felt so badly. In the end, I was able to find enough part marks to pass all but one of the students, but these students are used to getting 98% on physics tests - a 50%, even though it was on a quiz worth next to nothing in their final grade, was really hard on them. I think it's a very positive and important thing for them to be highly challenged by the problems they do in teams - this stretches them in an environment that has all sorts of supports. I didn't intend, however, to give them such a difficult problem in the already stressful situation of a quiz assessment.

I think I need to begin the next tutorial by apologizing. I hope I can also use it as a bit of teaching about teaching for my con-ed students - to share with them one of the challenges of teaching is to think like a student - and I didn't do that very effectively in writing the first quiz. While the students do need to be able to solve problems of this difficulty by the time the midterm arrives, it wasn't fair of me to expect them to be awesome problem solvers, able to synthesize different concepts, on the very first quiz. I hope that my apology reassures them that I have no desire to "weed them out" of physics, that I care about them, and that they aren't stupid.

I must admit, I'm glad that I'm not a doctor. As a teacher, I make a lot of mistakes, but at least there's always that next tutorial to try to set things right again.

Sweet and Savoury Motivations

I went to a teaching development workshop the other day, which was a great workshop. I learned a lot and made some great connections. However, I was also given all sorts of information on how to get a fancy certificate for attending. And it got me thinking and realizing that the sugary motivators that are held out before all of us from high school on through our undergrad are really no longer appetizing to me. I don't need to hear that this line will look extra pretty on my CV or resume. The sweet symmetry of a 96% on a transcript just doesn't thrill me anymore. I don't need a certificate - not even if it has a pretty gold seal. Even a neatly rolled up degree to collect dust under my bed doesn't feel very motivating. I don't really want to make any more money than I could make by leaving school now. So as I enter "grade 18" as you could call it, I feel like I've eaten so much of this false motivating candy, that I'm feeling a bit ill from it all.

So then, what happens when these sweet motivators are no longer motivating? Why should I work so hard to research physics education? To pour hours into my TA work? To complete paintings? To make music? To plan study groups? Why am I here, and why am I doing this?

I think that my motivation at this stage of my life looks much more like what I was motivated by when I was in kindergarten. And while I loved chocolate in kindergarten too, I like to think that my motivation both then and now is surprisingly more savoury and longer lasting. When I think about the things that drive me to get up in the morning and do life, these are the motivators that I think of today:

1. I love people. I want to give someone the precious gift of a place to belong. I want to see my students feel comfortable with themselves and confident in where they are headed. I want to see them smile. I want to see my friends feeling beautiful, and my family feeling important. People are surely the warmest motivators.
2. I'm curious - so curious that I remember spending a full year in elementary school trying to work out the formula for permutations and combinations since (fortunately) no one had told me that such a formula already existed. I just wanted to know how many different phone numbers or license plates there could be. And now that the grades and CV lines and certificates, which had sparkled often brighter than my curiosity in high school and undergrad, have lost their shine, I feel like that beautiful curiosity is able to motivate me more and more. 
3. I love to be loved. The approval, especially of those who I particularly look up to, is as important a motivator for me now as my kindergarten teacher's "that's a beautiful painting" was. It still means so much to me when someone tells me they felt connected or touched by my art, or that they learned something exciting in my class. Maybe it's childish, but I'd be lying to say that love and approval aren't still a very significant motivator for me.
4. I need meaning beyond my tiny life. Perhaps here is where my kindergarten theory diverges a bit. To be honest, I don't recall a deep need for meaning in kindergarten. But I certainly am highly motivated by it now. I want to have done something good with my life - something that could impact people in positive ways for years to come. I want someone's life to be better because of my life. I want the world to be better because of my life - at least by a little bit. I want to make God smile.

I see many different motivations in my first year students. Of course, many are highly motivated by marks - so much so that they would choose a boring course over an interesting one just because they think they could achieve a higher grade. But I think there are quite a few students who are motivated by things other than grades, and I'm looking forward to getting to know them better and finding out what these other motivators are.

Back in School

Hi Anneke,
What a treat to see your blog appear on my screen!  THANKS for all those insights on your first day.
DID YOU GET INTO THE SINGING???  Sure hope so.
I really look forward to reading about your first class as a TA!--and the reactions to the 3 tracks!!
I won't write more now because I have 3 proposals due on Monday (2 with other people) for the conference I run every 2 years at Herstmonceux Castle.  Have to be sure I'm on the program!!
Best,
Tom

The First Day!

It's very good to be back to school.

I love the excitement of the first day - the campus flooded with students, including my wonderful brother. It will be great to study with him again. The new students are eager and early to lecture. The returning students are chatting with their friends about the good ol' days when they were in first year. My brother was hobbling on crutches as he broke his ankle on Friday, but he was cheerfully eating his lunch on the bench of the phyics building's sign none the less.

I had the privilege of meeting the first year students I'll be working with in their first lecture today, and I can't wait to get to know them better. They have that hesitant but hopeful look about them - like they aren't quite sure what to make of this yet, but they're going to give themselves an honest chance to learn. A few of them are con-ed students, a few upper year students, a few people just giving physics a try, and lots of people hoping to study physics in the future. I can't wait to get to know them better and learn each of their stories - right now, I'm just doing my best to work on nailing down names and programs of study!

It was nice to sit in on the first lecture - the professor does a great job of getting the students to feel as ease and comfortable to laugh. It may take a bit of work/time to get them truly building community with each other. He started with a good exercise of putting them in groups according to which residence they live in, so that they have someone they know in rez who is also in physics. However, when they came into lab later that afternoon, they were dead silent with each other. We'll see what happens, but I hope that by continually putting them in learning communities in class, in the lab, and in tutorial, they will eventually build that community themselves. I love talking to people (I strike up conversation to random people for the minute that I'm waiting in the line at Timmies), so I sometimes have trouble understanding why two classmates would sit beside each other and not talk, but I know we all have different levels of comfort with that sort of thing (and perhaps we've been told 4000 times in school not to talk to our desk-neighbour...)

Another part of the first lecture that I particularly enjoyed - the professor was providing his reasoning for why he will be using interactive "peer instruction" teaching methods instead of traditional lecture. He did a brief activity in which he had the students write down something they are very good at (many students wrote "playing guitar", etc). Then he had the students write down how they learned that. Then he asked them how many people learned what they are good at by lecture? Did they watch their music teacher play the instrument? Clearly, they learned to be experts in that field by doing not just by passive listening. It was a quick activity, but I think it made the point clearly and effectively.

One thing that is of significant concern to me in the class is the fear factor. Today reminded me of just how terrified I was in first year physics. One of my high school teachers had told me that physics, and specifically physics at Queen's, was very very hard - I'll never know if he was subtly suggesting that I wasn't very bright or if this was a generalization for all students. But either way, it really made me scared. And that was exactly the look I saw on so many of my students' faces today. I want to sit down with each of them and tell them that physics does not deserve the bad reputation it so often gets. I want to tell them that it's okay if you don't understand everything right away - you aren't expected to! It's like learning an instrument - you don't play Beethoven after studying piano for a day. But they are used to courses like Biology where they can just sit down before the exam, memorize everything they need to know, and do fine. Physics isn't like that - it's a skill which you need to work on a little bit every day - and it's okay if you're not super pro at it the first time. I want to sit down with each of them, hear their fears, and help them work through those fears. If I had a genie, I would wish for 63 hours of extra time to spend an hour with each of them.

In my "research time", I did a few more modules of the online ethics course for researching students, and ran around campus on the ever on-going search for a test of student's self-efficacy. This is a much harder task than you might expect! Such tests seem to be either very expensive, unavailable or unknown to the many librarians I've spoken with, but I'm not giving up hope yet! The plan for tomorrow is to try the psychology building - I expect they'll have more insights there.


The evening of my first day, I had an encouraging audition! I'm very much hoping to sing with the choral ensemble this year, but priority goes to undergraduate music students. Encouragingly, however, the conductor seemed very pleased with my audition - here's hoping that not too many other alto II's in the music program tried out! I would absolutely love to sing again if I can. I'm on pins and needles until the list is posted in the music building tomorrow!

Soup

In preparation for this fall and just for the love of a good Physics book, I've been reading the Feynman Lectures on Physics (which are a great fun read that I'd highly recommend). In one of the earlier lectures, Feynman asks a good question:

Does blowing on your soup cool it down? And perhaps more importantly, were our mothers right when they told us this? 

I just loved reading his explanation - it ties together so many different concepts in Physics - the idea of "breaking free" of forces reminded me of escape velocities for a rocket to "leave" earth; the idea of looking at averages to see macroscopic properties reminded me of the beautiful nature of Physics in taking the most complicated system, and finding ways to talk about it in simple terms. So I thought I'd share Feynman's explanation in my own words - enjoy! Note that there's also a lot more going on in the cooling down of soup than described here, but this part is my favourite, so we'll have to save the rest for another day.

To keep this explanation prettier, we’ll pretend your soup is made of water only, though we know there’s delicious chicken and noodles in there too. If the water is cooling down, the chicken and noodles will cool down too, so it's fine to just ignore these in our explanation. (But definitely don't omit the chicken and noodles from your recipe or you will have rather bland soup!)

First, let’s think about what will happen to your soup whether or not you blow on it.

Molecules everywhere are always moving. In fact even if you cool a substance down (by slowing down the molecules) to absolute zero, the molecules can’t stop moving entirely – if they did, they’d violate Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which is a real crime. So molecules in everything just keep jiggling around.

Here you have a bowl of soup – in it are lots of water molecules, which are all attracted to each other. What attracts them? Well, if you look at a water molecule, it's a little bent, and you may recall from chemistry that this leaves one positive and one negative end (aka. it's a polarized molecule). So the negative end of one molecule is attracted to a positive end of another, etc, and we see all the water molecules "staying together". A really lovely example of this "sticking togetherness" is a raindrop. 

Even though the water molecules are all staying together, they are definitely still jiggling (because, as we just learned, molecules are not allowed to take a break from moving). Now, what we call the temperature of the soup is really just a fancy way of describing the average speed of these jiggling molecules. Naturally, (and for the word "average" to mean anything significant) some molecules must be moving faster than average and others a little slower. And - now here is the dramatic part you've been waiting for - every once in a while, a water molecule is near the surface and is moving so fast that it has enough energy to break free of that attraction to the other molecules around it! (Quick analogy: it's a bit similar to when you throw a paper clip past a magnet - if the paper clip is moving slowly, it'll just stick to the magnet, but if it's going fast enough it will have enough energy to escape the force and continue on it's merry way.) So back to our story: away flies the energetic little water molecule into the air above the soup - and this is evaporation.

The story of evaporation is pictured below. I couldn't show speed in a still image of course, so I illustrated faster molecules as having bigger smiles, because, well... I just like to think molecules are happier when they're moving fast - it seems more fun.

Now things get quite interesting. Let’s think for a moment about the molecules who are left behind when evaporation happens. In the above paragraph, the soup just lost one of its most energetic/fastest moving molecules. So the average speed of those left behind must therefore go down. It’s not that the other molecules have physically slowed down – it’s just that one of the fastest molecules is now gone, so when we take the average speed of those left behind, we see that it is lower. And since the average speed of the molecules directly tells us the temperature of the soup, the temperature must go down a little bit with every speedy molecule that evaporates.

After a little bit of evaporation, however, something else interesting happens. Remember that so far, we have not blown on the soup, so we can consider the air above the soup to be pretty much still. More water evaporates. The air above the soup gets more and more humidified. Eventually, the air will form an equilibrium with the soup where some water molecules are evaporating, lowering the temperature of the soup, and others are condensing back into the soup, raising the temperature of the soup back again. So we run into a problem where our great cooling mechanism of evaporation is not as being effective as we'd hoped.

What happens then when you blow on your soup? You are blowing away that humid air, so that the condensation happens less. That equilibrium of condensation/evaporation can no longer be established, so all the soup can do is keep evaporating! More evaporation means the average speed of the water molecules in the soup goes down, meaning the temperature of the soup goes down. So our mothers are correct! But then again, why did we ever doubt?

Fascinating

Thanks for the finale to your trip, Anneke.  It's been fascinating to follow--you could be a travel reporter, I expect, you write so thoughtfully about all your experiences. You won't ever forget your trip to Kenya. Sorry that Brussels was such a disappointing experience--I've never been there, but if I do make it, I'll be on alert for disappointment! Glad you got the time in England as part of your transition to home.
Yours,
Tom

Visiting the lovely Janet!

After school, we drove out past the Canadian High Commission to a Maasai market in a mall on the other end of town. The kids went mini-putting (the mall reminded me of the west Edmunton mall in that it had a waterpark and so many great activities for kids), and Irene and I did a bit of shopping.

After dinner, we drove quickly to the airport. We were running late, so I went in to pick up my boarding pass while the Mumo's parked the car. But very unfortunately, the security is different from Canada where anyone can enter the park of the airport where people starts at the entrance to the airport, so the Mumo's couldn't come in to say good-bye. They did pass a very sweet good-bye present through security however - I book about this beautiful country signed by all four of them. They are such generous people.

Inside the airport, I hurriedly picked up my boarding pass and ran to my gate. I knew I'd be just on time, so I was walking quite quickly. I followed someone through the gate where I thought I was to board the plane, and suddenly found myself on the tarmac! I then realized that the person I was following was not a fellow passenger, but a flight attendant, and I looked around a little bewildered. As I started to walk back where I'd come from, then security found me and informed me that I wasn't allowed to be there. I nearly burst out laughing - how had no one stopped me earlier? Soon enough, I found my plane, and was on my way to Brussels. That's when I couldn't help it, and I started to cry. I missed everyone in Nairobi, everyone in Kingston, and Janet in Kettering, but I was none of those places. It was a hard plane flight.

It was quite the culture shock in Brussels as I left the warm and friendly people of Nairobi behind. I did my usual scan of the waiting area in Brussels for someone who looked a little lonely as well, and I sat down next to a lady to strike up a conversation. I did all the usual, "so, where are you from?" "are you out on vacation?" etc. She turned to me and said, "I'm not interested in conversation, thank you." Awkward silence. So I went on a hunt for someone friendly to talk to. I found a lovely lady from Nairobi waiting for her plane to visit her sister in the UK. She was on a different airline, but I decided she was worth switching gates for, so we had a very nice chat before I boarded my plane for Heathrow.

When I landed in Heathrow, everything went quickly and smoothly. I soon found the fabulous Janet, whose great smile warmed my sleepy and sad heart. We left my bags at a bag check place, and set out to explore London! We were both rather sleepy, but we had a nice time. We saw parliment, big ben, and lots of lovely architecture. We wandered through a portrait gallery, stopped for tea in a little coffee shop and participated in a service at Westminster Abbey.

And we found that we could have a pint of dad's trains!

After a nice dinner we headed home, only to discover that we'd missed the last train for Kettering. So we took the train to Bedford, wrapped up in my keekorok from the market in Nairobi because it was unexpectedly cold, and then had to get a cab home. I had a much much needed shower, and fell into bed.

The next morning, we went to Janet's lovely church, where we were happily welcomed. We picked up the goods for a delicious lunch, and had a picnic on my keekorok (who knew one keekorok could be so useful?).

We opened the delicious tea masala that I'd bought in Nairobi, and enjoyed a lovely afternoon tea. That afternoon, we went for a little run around Kettering which was a nice way to see the town. And of course finished the day with a little bit of the big bang theory... how I had missed dear Sheldon.

On monday, we took the train out to Leicester, which is a lovely city near Kettering. It was lots of fun to explore the little shops, look at all the pretty architecture, churches and art galleries, and we even got to meet two of Janet's fellow teachers for tea! Eventually, our feet were too sore to walk another step and we headed home, this time catching the train.

The next morning, I was off to Heathrow to fly home. I was welcomed by the whole family, which was so nice. And soon got my much awaited hug from my favourite Kelsea :) It was worth coming home after all ;)

Mombasa and my last day in Nairobi

Mombasa is very beautiful and hot! I'm glad I was in Nairobi for some time first to acclimatize a little bit! I'm inside blogging today because my body just can't survive any more heat outside - even my sunscreen just melts off, lol. The hotel here is amazing - the architecture looks to be a mix of Arabic, Kenyan, and Greek influences. The walls are all painted white with lovely curves and lines around the doorways, and the furniture is all a handmade old stained dark wood.

On my first dinner, I happened to sit down with a couple who knew where my home town is! I was so excited. They grew up in Canada, but have been working in Nairobi for the last 20 years studying animal epidemiology. Everyone here is very friendly, welcoming and pleasantly surprised when I try to use my tiny bit of kiswahili. My room steward is the sweetest little elderly man - he picked me flowers to fill my ash tray when he saw I didn't smoke, and left me a note that said "Hello, This is my flowers to make you happy. Sleep well." It made my day :)

I think the people who animated Finding Nemo must have visited Mombasa - I went snorkling and saw so many beautiful fish and sea turtles! It was incredible - the fish were of every different shape size and colour, and the coral was beautiful. I went with a family from the UK, and it was quite funny to hear their different take on the experience. While I was blown away by all the amazing sea creatures, they were upset that there weren't enough fish (though there were so many different kinds of fish that I could see). Then they told me about there last vacation to the Galapalos Islands, and they said it was alright, but there were too many conservation projects, lol. I was tempted to explain that you can't exactly have lots of fish and few conservation projects at the same time... but I held my tongue.

I also went kayaking around the bay. The staff warned me be for I left that the tide was going out, but ridiculous me, I thought, "Oh I've canoed lots - I'm fine". Of course, I didn't pay close enough attention to the tide and ended up kayaking over a shallow area to a deeper spot in a little bay. The tide did indeed go out, and I found myself surrounded by too shallow water and dry ground, so I had to rather humbly walk back carrying my kayak. It was rather embarrassing, lol. A little later, a nice fellow taught me how to use a catamaran, which was lots of fun and the tide was going in this time :)

The people in Mombasa are even friendlier than the people in Nairobi. I actually never thought I'd meet people who were so friendly that I'd feel uncomfortable - usually, I think I'm the one making other people uncomfortable by striking up a random conversation, lol. Nairobi for me is just the right amount of friendliness - people are happy to talk, but if you want some time alone they're good with that too. On the beach, I literally didn't have a second alone. Irene explained to me that apparently some tourists come to Mombasa to pick up a date, so perhaps that's what they assumed I was there for, but it was quite awkward. On the upside, before the awkward part of these conversations, they shared some interesting things about their culture with me. Education seems to be viewed much more positively here than in Canada. Perhaps because it's so easily accessible in Canada, students take school for granted and often dislike it. Here, nearly everyone I've met was very excited to hear that I'm studying education. They felt that education was the key to a good life and spoke very positively about schools and learning. They also helped me a bit with my kiswahili, found me sea cucumbers, explained how the hollow out a canoe from a mango tree, and many other interesting things. So I appreciated their friendliness in what I learned, but I'm not very used to being quite so "popular" and that was a bit uncomfortable for me.

For dinner time, I did my usual scan to find a kind looking older couple to sit with. On my last dinner, I met a very nice couple from Holland who reminded me so much of my family - it made me feel a little bit homesick. They even gave me a package of schoolkrijt (a black licorice candy which is covered in icing sugar and shaped to look like school chalk) when I left. They were so nice to chat with.

On my last day, I explored a bit of the old city which was very interesting. The architecture is very beautiful and the people very welcoming. I wandered around Fort Jesus, which is quite lovely with redish orange walls on the seaside, and I visited a Hindu temple. In the Hindu temple, there were depictions of what happens to you if you eat meat, so I felt a little guilty when we went to the Carnivore, a restuarant in Nairobi with the Mumos when I got home that evening. The Carnivore was quite an experience though - I tried ostrich, crocodile, camel, and every kind of ridiculous meat - I think I gained 20 pounds in one meal, lol. Sorry dad, there was no horse meat, pickled herring or eel though ;)

When we got home, I packed my bags and fell into bed, very full and very sleepy. Today was my last day at Brookhouse. It was so nice to see everyone one more time - I will really miss everyone. There was a rather lengthy school assembly, so I sat with the year three's and did my best to keep them entertained - I felt badly for them, especially my one student who I think is somewhere on the ADHD spectrum. I started to draw a few students nearby and then gave the drawing to this student to finish to keep her occupied so she wouldn't get in trouble for squirming.
 
It was an especially sad good-bye to one of my very sweet year 8 boys - I think he must have said good-bye for a solid 15 or 20 minutes - he is such a wonderful student, but I really worry for him going into highschool next year. He would thrive in a place where he could develop his already wonderful skills working with young children, but he really struggles with academics, and I am so worried that four years of highschool academics will just crush his beautiful but fragile spirit. I will really miss him. Saying goodbye to the teachers was very sad too - they have all been so good to me. I would love to learn so much more from them about education, culture, language, birds, students, and so much else. But on the happy side, I'm also looking very forward to seeing all of you at home!

Wonderful reading!

Hi Anneke,
I feel very privileged to read all you are writing about your incredible, unforgetable trip!  thanks for including me.
Your stories certainly bring back memories of my time in Nigeria (40 years ago) and my very brief visit to Kenya 20+ years ago.
Have a safe trip home, see you soon!
Tom