I feel the need to brag for a moment

By far my favorite part of service is my learners. I've grown to really care about them. Sure, some days they make me want to scream, but over all they hold a really special place in my heart. I feel like part of what gives me some of the deepest insight on life in Namibia is via my learners. I would say I have a pretty close relationship with most of them. Between Girls Club, Boys Club, being a school counselor, teaching them and having them teach me, there is a level of trust between us. My learners keep these journals and a lot of it is basically to practice and be exposed to writing in English. These journals have opened my eyes to a lot. I'm always amazed to see what wanders threw their minds. Especially when their only prompt is "write about something you feel effecting your life", "write about the first thing on your mind", "write about anything". However, part of the learner's grades (as required by the Namibian Ministry of Education) is that they must do a short writing. This term I decided to make their short writing assignment writing a poem. So over the past weekend, after spending last week learning about different types of figurative language their assignment was to write me a poem about anything. Only rule, it must have figurative speech incorporated in some way at least once. As usual, some of them really blew my mind. My friends and family I talk to back home know I love to brag about my learners. I've grown up around English my whole life and even still I understand English is a hard language!! I've learned second, third and even fourth languages and, come on, learning a language in general is hard. To see some of the things these kids experience and can then in turn retell in a language outside their mother tongue amazes me. So over the next couple weeks I would like to highlight some of the work of my learners. Please note that each learner was asked first before I publish anything. They also got to choose their "display name". They are really excited actually! I do encourage any comments or compliments or constructive criticism people would like to offer my learners' works, I will happily deliver the feedback.