Christmas Break!

     Today was the last day of the first semester.  All my grades have been entered and I have made it through my first semester of teaching.  It was a half day and instead of having a Christmas party in the classroom, we took all of the elementary to a nearby orphanage and had a Christmas party there with the kids.

      Going to the orphanage is, by far, one of my favoite things to do here.  The kids are all so sweet and excited to see you!  They will climb on your lap, play with your hair, hold your hand, and basically just be all over you.  It reminds me so much of my kids at Westside and makes me miss then a lot, but it also makes me so happy to see all the little smiles.

     Today we brought in some chips and cookies for the kids.  We also sang some Christmas songs and did a little play for them.  After the worship service we played games!  The elementary kids were in charge of the whole program, games included.  It all went really well and I was so proud of all my kids.  During the games things got a little chaiotic, but it was great!  Most of the kids at the orphanage speak hardly any English and we only have a few students that speak Swahili and so the kids could not really understand the directions and they all just wanted to run around like crazy anyways. 

    The red noses were supposed to be a part of one of the games.  I think that the plan was for it to be some type of relay race, but I am not entirely sure.  At any rate, that game quickly turned into stick a nose on everyone around you and then run around laughing.  It was a lot of fun!

     After we got back from the orphanage I said goodbye to all my kids for a month.  Many of them are traveling back to the countries that they are originally from to visit their families.  I had the afternoon off then and already am wondering what I am going to do with myself for the next month. 

      We do have several things planned so far including a trip to the Mara and to Mombasa.  I also have quite a bit of lesson planning to do for next semester.  I will be getting two new students next semester and adding a grade so that I will now be teaching first through fourth grade.  I have to say that I am looking forward to sleeping in a little bit (my running has been pushed back to 7 am instead of 5:40) and also to cooking my own meals instead of eating in the cafeteria. 

Photos of School

2nd-4th grade Flat Stanley letters!

More pics of my kids.....

2nd grade

These smiles are the best!

This made my day :)

The elementary is under construction.  We are getting more classrooms added on!

I get this face pretty often.  It makes me laugh every time.

Police, Cats, and "Wolves"

     It has been over two weeks since I updated and so I guess that it is time.  The thing is that I really have no idea what to talk about.  I guess the first thing that I need to do is clarify that the other SMs and I were not almost thrown in jail.  Mom, I know that you read the other SMs blogs and it really was not all that dramatic.  What really happened is that we got stopped by two Kenyan police offices and they drove around with us in the school van for well over a half an hour in an attempt to get us to pay them a bribe for them to let us go.  The female officer was in the front seat torturing poor Tanzi with all kinds of threats that she could not have come through on while the male office sat in the back seat with the rest of us.  He alternated between talking on the phone with people from here at the school who were telling him that our vehicle was up to date on its inspection and they had no right to stop us, yelling another man on the phone in Swahili, and cracking jokes with the rest of us in the car.  The whole thing was really just the officers trying to intimidate us and get us to pay them a bribe so that we could get out of the “trouble” that we were supposedly in.  Really during the whole incident the only thing I could think about was the fact that I was hungry and it looked like it was going to be a while before I could eat.

     Other than that the last few weeks have really been uneventful.  We are a week and a half away from Christmas break.  In the elementary we have been practicing for our Christmas play that will be happening next Friday night.  We have also been trying to wrap things up and make it to good stopping points in all of our lessons.  Its hard to believe that I have been a teacher for a whole semester now.  Time is such a funny thing.  It goes so slowly and yet it just flies by. 

     Jacqui, Taylor, and I have adopted a cat I guess.  Or rather, I should say that the cat has adopted us.  She is pretty friendly most of the time.  She really likes to cuddle up in my lap every time I sit down and sometimes in the mornings when I am getting ready she follows me around the house.  Since she is able to let herself both in and out of the house she comes and goes as she pleases.  I do not mind her being in the house as long as she stays off of my bed.  I think that she knows that though.  She jumped up on my bed one time and after I yelled at her once she quickly jumped off and hid under it for a while.  She has not tried to get on it again.  She is a very smart cat and she is definitely growing on me.

     Last Sunday I had an interesting morning.  It was about 4:50 am and I heard this howling noise outside my house.  I got up, after untangling myself from my bug net and feeling for my headlight, and looked out my window and did not see anything.  I was about to get back in bed when I heard it again. I looked outside again and saw a big dog and it looked really hairy.  Without my glasses on, in the dark, and with the fact that I had been awake all of thirty seconds I immediately thought that there was a wolf in my yard.  Then as my mind started working I remembered that I was in Africa and so there obviously was not a wolf in my yard.  I ended up just getting up at this point because I was supposed to meet Yani at 5:30 to go running.  One our run we saw my “wolf” .  It was just a stray dog, he actually was not that big or very hairy either.  Between the dog and the pouring rain that Yani and I ran in for an hour, it made for an interesting morning.