The Top 14 Things that Tried to Kill Us This Week

Students add a tarp to the water pit to prevent evaporation.
Water pit construction. You can see the pipe leading from the settling pond to the pit. Also, in the background is the ongoing goat house project.
Student Isaack working on his science fair project. He's seeing if soda rots your teeth!
Form 2 students investigating breeds of rabbits in one of the enrichment classes.
Ahhh...the peaceful road leading to our house on Friday.

Let me just say this was a difficult week. Here's the run-down

1. By Monday we had lost three teachers (they were marking national tests, etc...) so we had six teachers for 135 students!

2. Form 2 and 3 students were finished with testing... and mentally finished with school! We had to work extra hard to convince them they really wanted to be there!

3. Because they are finished with classes, we get to do "other stuff" with Form 2 and 3 students. Form 3 are busy working on research papers and a drama. Form 2's are doing extra classes, science fair and drama. A science fair! Cripes!

4. Tuesday we sent Pre-form on a field trip to Snake Park. This is an annual end-of-year trip for pre-form where they look at local snakes, ride camels and go through a cultural tour... of the Maasai!

5. Thursday was Thanksgiving. We stayed up late in Arusha eating turkey dinner with friends Hunter and Tate.

6. Friday Lisa and Peter took students to Usa River on the other side of Arusha for a football match (boys and girls). While this was a great opportunity for those students, it also reduced our teaching staff yet again!

7. It's been raining! Everything is covered in mud!

8. Whitney had four friends arrive and stay in the house for a couple of days. They were very nice and brought lots of supplies for the school.

9. Trying to make revisions on the water pit. We dug the settling ponds too deep so all the water that flows to them just sinks into the ground before it reaches the pipe to actually go into the pit. I was down investigating Friday and dropped my phone in the water!

10. Still have to teach! Just because everything else is happening doesn't mean you can forget your teaching responsibilities. This is my favorite part anyway, so I try to plan around that first. We're getting the Form 1's ready for their end of year finals. I also worked with the form 2's offering extra enrichment classes. One was doing these interactive rabbit stations from a kit I got from the Ohio State University 4-H. The students really seemed to enjoy it!

11. Lisa's been working with the sports kids getting them ready for a sports weekend in Moshi next weekend.

12. Tests and reporting has to happen! We've been collecting student comments for all forms, grades, final form 1 tests, etc... Obviously that takes a lot of time, hunting down people, etc...

13. Student absences because of ceremonies. This year marks the beginning of the traditional circumcision ceremonies. Many of our boys wanted to go through this rite of passage. However, since our school goes about three weeks longer than other schools, we've had some scheduling conflicts. I think we've reached a good compromise with the students who will participate. But, it has definitely been a big unknown variable this week.

14. Oh yeah... and we sent one of our students to America for three weeks yesterday! Our student, Margaret was selected to participate in an international leadership event held in Washington DC. She went to Dar Es Salaam earlier this week, returned mid-week, and flew out of Dar yesterday.

By Friday, I was pretty whipped. I got dropped off in Monduli and was walking up the hill to my house. It was pretty peaceful and the sun was shining. The jacaranda trees are in full bloom and smelled amazing. I can lose perspective pretty fast...especially after a week like this. I took a picture of the road to help me remember....