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Today is Mandela's 93rd birthday! People all around the country celebrate his birthday by giving back to the community. For 67 years, Mandela fought in the apartheid struggle, and so today, each South African is challenged to give 67 minutes in honor of his life. At LEAP 4, we celebrated his birthday by going to Smile Kids pre-school and playing with the kids there.

We sang songs, and the LEAP students taught lessons on numbers and the alphabet, and we painted beautiful pictures on the walls of their pre-school. I had so much fun. I spent a lot of time playing hand games with the little ones (the girl pictured in the top left... we seriously played the same hand game for at least 30 minutes) and then giving them piggy back rides. The little one in the upper-right, she couldn't be more than two-years-old, we played together taking pictures on my iPhone for a while. A lot of the kids, when they saw I had this phone, were more than eager to pose for cute pictures.

At the end of the day, I felt tired and happy. I got to play with kids all day, and get to know some of the LEAP 4 students even better. Tomorrow starts the first official day back from the holiday break, and I will be working with each of the teachers to do the Combined Studies course, and that begins at 7:30 sharp.