The Last Month of School

The month of June was a very busy month. Our regular PE teacher left at the end of May, so another one of our parents volunteered to teach swimming for the last month and a half of school. We also had several birthdays, including Debbies.

The students were busy with lots of presentations. The older students have been studying U.S. history and had three parts to their final projects. They had to make a timeline for a section of history, choose a person from their time period to write a biography about, and memorize a famous speach from their time period. We seperated the timeline presentations and speeches into two Fridays. During the first one we covered US history from 1600 -1800 and had Susan B. Anthony's speech on women's rights, Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, the introduction to the Declaration of Independence and Red Jackets speech to the Iriquois Six Nations. On the second Friday we had the last 200 years of US history, 250 years of Canadian history (for our two Canadian students), and recitals of "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere," Roosevelt's "a day that will live in infamy," Trudeau's speech at Canada's proclomation ceremony and the full "I Have a Dream" speech by Martin Luther King Jr. Also on the second Friday, Alandra, Gwen and Megan shared stories that they had written. Alandra's was an especially funny story about a princess kidnapped by a bad guy named Stinky.

As soon as these presentations were over, it was time to prepare for our end of the year program. We had to rent a room as we were expecting 30+ people to attend including Michelle and Brad's parents and brother who came with a Saltshaker team of thirteen people from Kansas and one from California. We decided that this presentation would be full of fun skits and songs. We began with "show and tell" in which four of the girls showed us a Rwandan dance they'd been learning and about half of the students performed on violin, banjo, or piano. Next, we did several skits based on ones that Michelle and I had seen at various camps and had reworked to reflect parts of our school day. We also played the cup game to the song "Screendoor on a Submarine," played several songs on recorders, and the students sang very funny renditions of "There's a Hole in the Bucket" and "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better." Even the refreshments of cookies and pretzels were made by the students. We were told that it was the best program of the year.






While the team from Kansas was here, they not only came to our final presentation, they also helped teach English at the secondary school, helped to build an addition to the school, did some presentations on "True Love Waits," visitted with youth in Changugu, played volleyball, soccer and basketball with youth, visited memorial sites and the Akagira National Park, and of course did a little shopping. This definitely kept Brad busy; however, Michelle and I only joined them for some of their activities. The team was only here for a little over two weeks, but it was fun to get to know them and spend some time with them.

Brad and Michelles parents are staying for several more weeks and they have plans to go to Burundi and Uganda in the next couple of weeks. If my visa comes through, I may go to Burundi also. My other plans for the summer include sleeping, planning for the next school year, working on my Kinyarwanda, and attending the camp/conference for missionaries on Lake Kivu the first week of August.