JOY!

Today's Sunday School lesson was the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, from Luke 18.  We had our usual students (Jackson, Deborah, Glory, Grace and Gladness) as well as two student helpers, Stephanie and Paulina.  We talked about the way the two men prayed and how we talk to God. 

When talking about prayer, we talked about JOY as a model for prayer;

J: Jesus

We talked about thanking God (Jesus) for all he has done for us and for our blessings. God is great!

O: Others

We talked about praying for others that we know are sick, sad, lonely, or in trouble.  We can also pray prayers of thanksgiving for our friends and family that have good things happening in their lives!

Y: Yourself

We talked about praying for the things we need in our lives. 

For each letter, I had glued a big, colorful letter to pieces of paper, and we wrote things we could pray about in each category on them.

After talking about prayer, we went around the table and all the children prayed.  I thought they would all be too shy to pray aloud, but everyone participated enthusiastically and we had a really nice prayer.

We finished off Bible class with words searches and coloring pages, which the kids always enjoy.

After Bible class, I went back to the library for a while to get a little work done.  Some of the boys (high school students) were hanging around, and they saw our JOY letters and decided they needed to be permanent decorations in the library, for some reason, and taped them up at the top of the blackboard.  I think they mostly just wanted to excuse to climb on chairs, but it does look nice up there. 

The internet was working pretty well (well, for here) today, so I let the boys watch the football (soccer) highlights of the week.  They're all big fans of not only Tanzanian teams, but also the English league and La Liga, the Spanish league.  They really miss not always being able to get the scores every week while they are at school, so this quickly drew quite a crowd!  Of course, little Jackson was right in the middle of it.  At six years old, he's already a huge soccer fan! 

2019 Parents Meeting

Oscar MC-ing a recent parent-teacher meeting.

The last Saturday of every month is Parents' Day at Alpha Omega.  This is when any parents who are able to make the trip can come on campus and spend the day with their child.  Boarding school can be a bit hard on kids, who are away from their families for at least nine month out of the year, so they really look forward to visits from their family.  Unfortunately, some parents live too far away or for various other reasons don't visit, so it can also be a hard day for some students.  We have been encouraged to see, though, some students with local family adopting a friend for the day, and inviting a friend who doesn't have close family to come sit under a tree and chat with their family and share the snacks their mom brought.  

On one of the parents' days every year, usually in September or October, we have a PTO (parent-teacher) meeting, during which the school administration shares what's been going on at the school and makes announcements about plans for the next school year, and parents are given a chance to ask questions, share ideas, or discuss problems.  

Ilampa (deputy headmaster), Godfrey (headmaster) and Lewis (school manager) sit at the administration table

Headmaster Godfrey speaking to the parents

Cleanliness

Here in Tanzania, most schools do not employ full-time janitors.  We do have some maintenance guys for the heavy work that needs to be done, and there is a woman who cleans the administration building and offices.  However, most of the cleaning around the school is done by the students.  There is a time slot on the schedule in the morning before class as well as an hour in the afternoon two or three times a week for cleanliness, as the students call it here.  

The students are divided in 'families', named after Biblical cities since Lewis was in charge of the naming.  The families meet once a week to talk about school issues and offer peer counseling and such, and also each family is assigned a different area of the school to clean. 

Today I got a few pictures of the form one students giving their classroom a very thorough cleaning, including mopping the floor and washing (throwing water at, anyhow) the windows. 

Preform Interviews for the Class of 2023

Many parents and family members waiting for the Headmaster to make an announcement.

Although it's just September, we are already busy preparing for the next school year.  Today, we had our first day of Form 1 Interviews (it's an exam, not an interview, but that's how it's generally referred to here).  Students who would like to attend school here next year come to take an entrance exam.  We had about eighty students try the exam today, and we'll have another day next weekend, as well as an opportunity to take the exam in Dar es Salaam or Mwanza (the two biggest cities in Tanzania, one on the east coast and one in the far west on the shore of Lake Victoria) for students who live too far away to travel here to take the exam.  We have openings for forty-one form one students for 2020.

Since our students have done well in the national exams the last couple of years, we can now be more selective about incoming students.  Let's hope we get lots of good candidates today!  I don't usually come up to the school on Saturday, but I wanted to open the library for the parents of the prospective students to see if they toured the school, and it's nice to walk around and meet some of the students that I may be teaching soon. 

Those who are selected early enough will be invited to come for a short pre-form class in November and December.  It will be five weeks to practice English and see if the students like our school environment and can do well here.  I will be teaching English for preform again this year just as I did last year. I look forward to meeting my new students! 

My Sunny Living Room

Since I moved into my own apartment last March, I've been slowly decorating and acquiring furniture.  A lot of things I've just done without for a while, knowing that the Shorts would be selling a lot of their furniture and such when they started preparing to move.  My living room finally feels complete now that I have a bookshelf.  It used to be in Michela's room, but she packed up her books and knickknacks last week, so now I have it.  It's nice to have a place for all the odds and ends that accumulate, and the room finally feels complete.

I love my living room early in the morning as the sun streams in! Also, believe it or not, that is a very demure and understated couch by local tastes.  I'm fortunate to have one in neutral colors that's not bright orange or purple or red.  

Must Have a Photo Right Now!!

Evarist and Sharon rushed into the library right before evening devotional.  They begged me to take their picture with this thing.  It was very very important that they get a picture with it.  

I'm not sure what it is (looks like a wooden scooter toy?), where they got it, what they were doing with it, or why they needed a photo.  They have never asked to see the photo and never mentioned it ever again.  

Teenagers are weird. 

Green Curry!

In my adult life, I've lived mostly in large cities: Milan, Wuhan, Nashville... I love being able to eat all sorts of international foods and be around a mix of cultures.  Monduli is quite different.  If I want to eat out, there's chicken and french fries or chips mayai (basically a french fry omelet).  That's really about it as far as options.  There's a bit more in Arusha (Chinese, Indian, Greek, pizza), but not everything, and I don't get the chance to eat out there much anyhow.  I don't mind cooking, but I do miss easily having a wider variety.  So, I've been trying out some new recipes. 

One of the foods I particularly miss is Thai food, which is not available even in Arusha.  However, I found that curry pastes are available!  I bought green curry paste (a mix of all the spices) and coconut milk, and made some pretty good green curry!  It's not really all that green looking, but it tastes good.  I put chicken, mushrooms, broccoli, and bell peppers in it this time and ate it with rice.  Green curry is one of my comfort foods, so I'm really excited that I can now make it at home! 

Another Tuesday with Form 3

There's never a dull moment around here! Here are a few of my form three students trying to be artistic and cool in the stairwell.  

Gravy and Biscuits

Every now and then, it's good to get a taste of home.  I don't make gravy and biscuits too often because I really don't need to carbs, and bacon is pretty expensive here.  I had a quiet, chilly September Saturday night, though, so I made some.  It didn't turn out as good as I'd hoped; my bacon wasn't fatty enough to really give enough grease so the gravy was a bit bland.  Still, it was nice to have a truly southern meal!

In the biscuits above, you can see the one I pinched to try the raw dough.  Whenever my mother and I were every baking biscuits, we'd always pinch a bite of the salty dough.  Do any of you do that?

You can see a bit of my kitchen here.  I have a built-in range on the counter, but it's not hooked up to gas.  I also have the freestanding stove, and I really didn't need both just for one person.  The freestanding one has an electric oven, one electric burner, and three gas burners, and is hooked up to a small gas cannister that I can lift myself.  The built-in one would be hooked to a large outdoor gas can about three times the size of the one you can see.  So, I chose the freestanding one to have the oven and because I can call a boda boda (motorcycle taxi) to go pick up a new gas canister for me, while the big one would require a car and two people to move it. 

Busy Library

Another busy day in the library!  The library is crowded this Wednesday afternoon!  Above, one of our form three library workers, Baraka, checks out books for his classmates. 

We received several big white folding tables in the container shipment, as well as these blue chairs.  Three tables (only two so far, but another is promised), as well as a set of blue chairs, have been assigned to the library.  The students are really enjoying the new workspace! 

Here's a wide-angle shot of the library.  In the foreground, you can see the two unabridged dictionaries we received.  The students have been REALLY impressed that there are so many words in the English language!  Of course, already several form one boys have lugged one of the things over and claimed that they were checking it out as their weekly story book.  I have a feeling they won't get tired of this joke for a while. 

Nembris and Anneth, two of my form three students. 

Salum and Norman like to be hams. 

While everyone's having fun around me, I'm trying to get through a little grading, checking some recent homework assignments. 

There were little scraps of paper inside a lot of the books; I'm not sure exactly what for.  However, these students don't waste much, so Innes and Denisa are using the small scraps to make colorful bookmarks.

See? Look, we're studying! Really!

Monday in the Library

It's another busy Monday afternoon in the library!  The students, on their lunch break right now, are checking out the new books that are now in the shelves.  We've still got a lot to go, but the first few boxes of books are available for students to check out now. I've also made a poster with all of the color-coded genres on it.  The students were all referring to it so much that I temporarily stuck it on the wall right by the shelves.  I'll affix it more permanently in an empty spot of wall by the door eventually.  I'm waiting first to see if we need to add additional genres, depending on how many books of different types that we get.  

Michela and I are still processing more in between our regular lunch-hour duties of helping students find, check out, and return books.  

Arusha Errands

Another trip into Arusha on a day I don't teach any classes...Beth and I ran errands both for ourselves and the school, stopping by the bookstore for supplies and the eye doctor to pick up students' glasses that had been repaired before doing our own grocery shopping. 

Emmy and I hung out in the car during one of the errands when just Beth ran in.  

More Book Processing

We're still at it...another afternoon of stickering and stamping and taping.  Beth is here helping Michela and I again, and one of our student workers, Baraka, has also spent several hours helping.  A few other students have volunteered to help, specifically with the stamping part, but I've got to be careful who I let handle the ink pad.  Charles was doing quite well stamping books, but he would get carried away and also stamp passers-by.  

I'm not sure why we received a book in Russian...we also received a copy of the same book in English.  Perhaps Ralpha and Twyla (missionaries up the mountain in Monduli Juu) would like it? They were formerly missionaries in Ukraine for a while and learned some Russian.  

Unpacking Boxes

Another busy day in the library!  We're going to be having a lot of busy days for a while as we unpack all the boxes of books.  Once they're unpacked, we scan them into our LibraryThing database, add labels, genre stickers (different colors by genre to sort them into sections easily), stickers with how many points the book is worth in our reading point system, stamp them with the school stamp, and tape the covers with packing tape to make them last longer.  So, it's going to take a while to do all that with nearly three thousand books!

Some of our bookworm students (and Lewis) are enjoying checking out the new books as they're unpacked.  So much reading to be done now! 

Michela has been working in the library for the last few years; it has been her project and "job".  Now that I am the official librarian, the two of us are in charge of this huge project of sorting and preparing all the books.  We've been looking forward to it, but it's a major undertaking, for sure!  Beth has volunteered to come and help us a few hours at a time, as well, which helps!  

Alpha Omega Sunday Service

Another Sunday here at Alpha Omega!  Today, Lewis is speaking.  I took a video of the singing today, but the file is too large to post here on the blog.  You can hear it on my Facebook page!