Welcome to the Second Term

Singing the school song...

The students returned from the month-long school holiday on July 7th.  A common practice here in Tanzania is the dreaded Welcome Back Exam.  To motivate them not to forget everything over long breaks and to get their brains back into school mode quickly, they return on Sunday afternoon and have exams starting Monday morning.  Study quickly! The first three days of school were exams in various subjects (three a day).  

Today, Friday, we had a school assembly to officially welcome everyone to the second semester of the school year (Tanzanian school years are calendar years, not like the US tradition of starting a school year in the fall).

I returned to my home-away-from-home (feels like I spend more time there than at my actual home), the library.  Here's a couple of the form 2 girls, Hawa and Edina, who were hanging out today.

Lewis stopped by to chat with some of the students.  He cracks them up by being very animated in his story-telling. When he does a devotional speech, he is often acting things out or using different voices to be dramatic; the kids all end up with their hands on their faces in second-hand embarrassment, but they don't forget what he said! Just as an aside, one thing I find rather charming about Tanzanian English is that they call hanging out with their friends "making stories with my friends".