Kathleen K. is spending her year in Julie Lokun’s Illinois cluster.  She is enrolled in the UCLA program to fulfill her educational requirements.  As part of her program she presented to a group of 8 and 9 year olds at Westmoor Elementary School in Northbrook, about her home country South Africa.  Kathleen sent in a write up that we’d like to share:

“For my presentation I printed out pictures that involved South Africa like our traditional foods, sport, our beautiful beaches, our flag and where we are positioned on the world map. I did this to give the children a visual representation of the things that I was taking about.

At the beginning of the presentation I introduced myself and explained what an au pair was. I then showed them a globe and asked them if any of them knew where South Africa was and they raised their hands and I selected somebody to point to the globe. During the presentation I taught them how to say hello, yes, no and the numbers 1-10 in Afrikaans. I then handed out the supplies that were sent to me, the kids loved it and immediately started to fill everything in. They were all so curious and had so many questions about South Africa.

Before the presentation I was so nervous but the kids were so friendly and well behaved that I forgot all about my nervousness. I really enjoyed my time there and I felt as though they were really attentive and they were learning a lot. It was so nice to speak about my home country and I was so proud to share all of the interesting things about South Africa.

A week after the presentation I was walking my host families dog and a lady approached me and said that her daughter was in the class where I conducted the presentation and she said that her daughter came home that day and couldn’t stop talking about South Africa and that made me so happy because I had no idea that I had sparked such an interest in these young children.”