School Begins

Sept. 9, 2016

We have survived two days of school! Yesterday the kids came back from a month of holidays at home. Airplanes came and went from about 9 am until 5 pm dropping kids off. Kids who live in local villages came by car or truck or motorbike. It was an afternoon of unpacking clothes, comforting the younger children and excitement with the older children being back with friends. Tim and I knew 5 or 6 kids from 6 years ago but they have certainly changed!

Tim and I are sharing boys dorm duties with another couple which is really great.  It means that every second morning you can sleep in until 6 am! Wake up bell is at 6:15 but when on dorm you need to be up by 5am and have the laundry out and devos ready. Breakfast is at 7. We wash laundry at night or early morning when there is power, then in early morning it is hung up, dried and ironed and returned to the dorm the next day. There is quite a pile of laundry each day. After breakfast, the kids come back to dorm, pick up school books, make beds and straighten cupboards. School assembly starts at 745 am and then classes go until 12 noon. After lunch there is a rest time which is a bit of a misnomer.  The kids must stay quietly on their beds for 45 mins but they seem to be able to be pretty active quietly!! Then back to classes for afternoon. Playtime after school or homework time for the older kids. All staff take turns on yard supervision. Supper is at 5:30. Free time until 6:10, then bath time at 6:10 for the younger boys, devotios and lights out at 7. Then intermediates same routine except lights out at 8 and grade 8&9 have lights out at 9. So when laundry is done, we get to go home. Tim is now doing his teaching plans for tomorrow. Then a 5 am wake up tomorrow but Thursday afternoons we are both free after lunch and the other couple takes over dorm for 24 hours. All the staff are divided into two teams and each team takes turns on the weekends. So on your weekend on, you are supervising kids a lot,  either down at the river or games or sports, crafts and Sunday school on Sunday morning and lots of yard supervision. But every second weekend you are free of duties from Saturday noon until Sunday evening. Since there is nowhere to go, people sleep and prepare lessons for the next week! It is busy but the days will fly by, I think!

It is definitely warm but it is cooler for a couple hours in the morning, which is really nice. It is dry and brown everywhere and the leaves are off the trees. People are getting their fields ready for the first rains. There has been no rain since March. Everyone is hoping for rain in October. The school gardens are doing well as they are on a slope and they run creek water from the top of the slope down. Well planned. So we have carrots and cabbage, beets and green peppers and the pineapple season is just started. We are getting our veggies each day.  The meals are good and Tim and I don't do dishes because it interferes with dorm duties.

Learning kids names is a struggle but today I sat down in room 1 and memorized the name of the kid that sleeps in each bed in that room so hopefully I will sooner rather than later put names to the kids. There are 12 kids in the grade 2 math class so hopefully I will get to know them as well because I am with them 6 times a week. Tim is teaching at least one class in each grade plus sports so he is busy and then he has lots of extra responsibilities because he is willing to do anything! The staff are great and make us feel so welcomed me and the kids are pretty loving and kind.