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This is from the last day of an English class I taught once a week for the documentary. We got this picture in a hurry just as we were leaving and saying our goodbyes. It was at a boarding school where all the kids from miles around would go after they graduated from the highest level that was taught in the villages. It was over an hour's walk away from our village. Maybe even an hour and a half. Some of the kids made the walk every day because their parents couldn't afford the $80 a year that it would take to house and feed them there. I used to pass them when I was jogging in the morning. The boys and some of the girls would start jogging with me. I would try to get them to stop -- I thought they were crazy... they had to walk for over an hour and yet here they were running and sweating with me! I liked it though.

Anyway, this is from the last day. The class that day was the best class I taught the whole time I was there but it wasn't filmed. I had come up with a lot of good ideas about teaching English from the impromptu sessions I'd started having with the kids from the village. We really made some fun progress that day. Even the few kids who didn't seem to care about learning English were getting into it. The first class we'd had there a month earlier -- which was a disaster -- was filmed. Oh well. We'd sort of had a falling out with the headmaster of this school just before this and we'd already gotten all the footage we needed from this place so on this last day we were just fulfilling a promise we'd made to the kids. I just wish I could have done more.

The girl in the back of the crowd was so sweet. She was a good student but like many of the other students she'd get so nervous in her eagerness to learn that she had a hard time catching her breath when you worked with her one on one. I'm glad my camera happened to choose her to focus on. She was short and had been scooting around behind the other kids trying to get into the picture. When you see her here I had just picked her up and plopped her on the desk that she's kneeling on.