The Big Day

Today was not only the last day of the first full week of school, it was also the day of our Grand Opening Celebration. We had the US Ambassador, the Minister of Education, USAID folks and many more VIPs attending, so we had some unusual things happen, too.

During 2nd period I started noticing people walking by my classroom door (my classroom now has desks! YEAH!!!) with very large automatic weapons. This is not totally unusual because we have 2 or 3 armed guards around the school all the time, but these seemed much more serious. (I'll try to find some pictures.) Right after my students had finished their geometry quizzes, they brought in the bomb sniffing dog, a very large German Shepherd. My national students (girls) were scared to death. I tried to get them to sit still and take deep breaths, but I could see the panic on their faces. I know that feeling from my extreme fear of large dogs when I was a child, but there really wasn't a lot I could do. Luckily it only took a couple of minutes and the trainers were great with explaining to the students what was going on.

The ceremony itself was very nice. The speakers were good. Personally I thought the 2 student speeches were the best. Some of our 7th and 8th graders were even able to play a processional on xylophones and marimbas. (We have an AWESOME music teacher!) Here's here pictures from one of the first cleaning days. You can't really tell, but she had dust all over her nose and fingers from sorting through books.

After the ceremony we had the rest of the day with students who were a little more hyper than normal for 2 reasons: 1) the assembly had messed with the schedule, so we totally played lunch by ear which is quite interesting to do in a school with no bell system and where all the high school classes are in different buildings. 2)We have three days off next week for the elections, so many were just waiting for the break.

What do we have planned during the elections you ask? Well, we are planning to stock up on Twix, Peanut Butter, Snickers, and other "essentials" tomorrow (kind of like knowing that there's a snow storm coming), and then we'll also do a little school planning on Saturday-Monday. But our BIG endeavor is to work on new lyrics for all the songs from the Sound of Music based on life here in K-town. We want to have a talent show night at our house for other NGO's and put on our performance. I'll be sure to post the lyrics soon, too.

Thanks so much for all of your "thoughts" during this crucial time for the school and the country!