One last set of exams...

Ok, so they were only midterm exams, and the students all did quite well, but for me, it is my last set of exams as MCC bought my ticket home two weeks before we close the school for the term... (my ticket is purchased for a month from tomorrow!!!) I have warned the teachers, telling them all how much I have appreciated teaching with them this year and how much I admire their commitment to the children. They told me it was clear I really tried, that I had done a good job, and that it was clear I really cared about the students and had good relationships with them. This conversation was one of those that tells me if I was sitting for an exam of life, I seem to be passing... and I really have loved teaching here, getting to be part of this great venture of education.

Exams meanwhile are always a bit of a break for me, as I spend most of the day sitting and watching to make sure my students don't try and cheat, or steal as they call it. Also, my children are brilliant... We are always short on rubbers, so they are always borrowing from each other, and they were totally utilizing a balloon left over from our last celebration as an eraser. They really try, and keep on working towards their dreams.

In other news, it is getting colder, heading towards July as the coldest month. I used to think it was supposed to be raining a lot now, and while it does some, this is the cold season, not the rainy cold season... so after learning this, I was less alarmed by our lack of rain even though I do think our short rains were shorter and on a funny schedule this year. Still, it is getting cold, so when we aren't in school or playing sports, the children spend a lot of time just leaning up against the old dorm across from the kitchen because that wall is the best place to attract the afternoon sun and to pass the afternoon away cracking jokes and chatting. I have had some pretty hilarious times there this week, for if I walk by, the children are quick to invite me to come hangout, and always even if I was headed somewhere else, I have to say yes... for those are the times where you stop and wonder if life can get any better than this... While I love teaching, I always look  forward to the afternoon hangout times...

Meanwhile, in other news, visitors arrived last night. There are a group of six or seven women from Canada who will be here for ten days. While people have been here throughout most of my year, I do not know if this sort of a group has come before with such an element of being a group. However, they have come with our big partner who I have met as she has already visited twice since I have been here, and coming with her, I know that while I can still play host, they will be quite well taken care of and I can keep about my daily life. They took the fact htat we have mice in residence quite well(and hung all their food which looks pretty funny) so I have decided so far, they are okay... They are just the first of a string of visitors who will come between now and when I leave.

And leaving... I still can't believe I have been here ten months and my time is racing to an end... In Devotions the other day one of the girls shared Ecclesiastes 4:1, there is a time for everything under heaven. I have decided that will be my lens for leaving. There was a time to be here, and there will be a time to come home... and I have the tune to some American folk song in my head... Still, random tunes aside, I have found that a helpful context to keep my flood of emotions in, and as much as I can, I have begun to prepare myself and my children for a time of saying goodbye, wanting them to know just how much they all mean to me...

Life is beautiful

Life here is busy but in a good, full and rich kind of way... Life here is beautiful!

Last weekend I had the opportunity to do some traveling with our Madam as she needed to take her soldier to his barracks in Mombasa. It was a great weekend. I really enjoyed getting to see the coast again, but mostly getting to know the Madam more on a person to person level and to share some family life with her. Life here is always family life. If you are under the misconception that that is something very much different than family life in America, you are wrong... it is mostly just love and grace and sharing life despite our humanity together, and it is beautiful, just like it is in America... sometimes hard, but beautiful...

Another thing which is beautiful is Kenyan countryside, which I have had the opportunity to see a lot of. While I had been to Mombasa before back in December, I had made the trip their on a night bus and had no idea what lay between Nairobi and Mombasa. While on Friday we drove through the night to get there, coming back was Monday during the day, and it was stunning from the coastal farmland through the hours of African grassland, to foothills and farmland back to the outskirts of industrial Nairobi at dusk. I would have taken pictures, but I tried once and if you take pictures out of a moving vehicle, they are blurred... so you will have to simply believe, that Kenya is insanely beautiful.

Coming back to Hope is always beautiful too, even after being gone a few days; the greetings of my fellow teachers, the smiles that light up the children's faces when they see I return, and the feeling of coming home. The day to day is beautiful... the teaching which still terrifies me slightly with the gravity of my job; it is the children's future!... the babies who are getting so big but are always ready for some quality cuddling and reward you with big eyes and bright smiles... the teasing of friends as we go about our day to day... the feeling of home...

With just over a month remaining in Kenya, I feel torn between two homes; the home I have made for myself here with the children and the home which calls me back to America. It is completely natural and logical for me in the same breath to be excited to see my family and to lament how I will ever say goodbye... to count the days both in anticipation and in terror... Often, I simply begin to reflect on this past year and on the richness of it and on how much I have grown as a person, on how much these children have taught me. Often, I am simply overwhelmed by the grace in it all, by God's grace in my life in somehow bringing me here... Sometimes I simply reflect on how life is beautiful...

Time is racing...

Every morning I start my classes by writing the date on the blackboard. Sometimes I get confused because here I would say 2/6/2011 and back home I would write 6/2/2011... Still, normally I get it correct, or my students, ever helpful, correct me. Each morning I am confronted with the passage of time, and this morning I was struck by the realization, how is it June already? Then, when one of my little friends was asking when I was leaving, saying July sounds suddenly near. I remember when  a friend from Canada was leaving in January, and July seemed ages away and was easy to dismiss to the children... 'I am here for a long time yet.' Only, now I am not... I have less than fifty days remaining in Kenya, and the time is racing! I don't know how I will ever say goodbye... I told my little friend though I would be so sad and cry to say goodbye, "nitalia kusema kwaheri" but then told her I would say 'tutaonana' instead, which means we will see each other... as I hope somehow to not have it be goodbye forever, but to find a way to come back and visit all my sisters and brothers here in Kenya...

Meanwhile, when I am not moping, panicked or even excited about my quickly coming departure, life here is good, full of celebration and holiday. On Sunday  we had a sweet celebration for our soldier brother, with songs, dances, recited poems and comedies and a feast of rice, beans, chicken, bananas, buns and even soda and cake. We recently had a chapter on celebrations in my Standard four  class, and according to these kids, it is the food that makes a celebration, so Sundays affair was as good as it gets, even if with delays and how long things really take we didn't eat lunch until 5pm...

Then yesterday was Kenya's 48th Madaraka Day, or Independence Day. Kenya became independent from Britain in 1963. Here at Hope we watched the parade on TV and the singing and then the Prime Ministers speech in Kiswahili but turned the TV off during the President's speech because lunch was ready... this made me laugh although I was probably the only one actually listening by that point. He talked about how far Kenya has come in the last 48 years to achieve social services like education, and reemphasized the goals for the country to keep moving forward... Also, it meant we didn't have school which was a nice to have a midweek chance to sleep in...

Now our soldier brother leaves tomorrow to report to his unit, and I have been invited for the trip to drop him off in Mombassa. I am excited. It should be fun. I was in Mombassa briefly in December when I was on vacation, and the best thing about it is, it is on the ocean, so I  should have a chance to hopefully wave at the Indian Ocean again... And travelling with the Madam is always fun!

Anyways, in other news, I still love getting emails... and one of the babies burped on me earlier, so I smell like sour milk!