Category Archives: School

Awards and Inductions

School, Texas Culture

So we’ve apparently entered the end of the year awards season, which like other things seems bigger in Texas. James got inducted into the National Jr. Honors Society this morning:

JamesJrHonnorSociety_IMG_7168
And Joel got awards for no infractions and A honor roll all year:
JoelAwards_IMG_7186

We were worried when the K-3 awards ceremony, which had been scheduled for 8-10am, was still going at 10:15 (and in the same venue as the grades 4-6 ceremony, which was to start at 10am…). But they made up some time during the second ceremony, ending just after 11, and thereby deserving the Howard H. Sage Award for Procedural Efficiency (IMHO).

 

Prepping the Congo trip

Church, Congo + Culture, School, , ,

imageToday I started printing the posters I’m making for my trip to DRC at the end of June. They should be large enough to be seen by people a long distance away, so they can be used in large classrooms/venues.  The last time I was in Nia-nia, they did some basic teaching with small drawings on a chalk board; hopefully this will help make grassroots literacy more effective. In another location, I had the opportunity to help our local movers and shakers present alphabet work in an open marketplace –so we’re ready for anything!

For interested readers, Anna is pointing to the poster for the egressive (air going out) voiced (vocal cords vibrating) stop (consonant where no air passes) made just behind the teeth. This is different from the implosive (air going in) stop at the same place, on the right. They have a similar contrast for stops made with the lips (‘b’ and ‘bh’). I’ve also made posters for the nine vowels, to help teach contrasts between vowels that they have not been writing (similar to the difference between ‘beet’ and ‘bit’ in English), for a total of 13 posters for this language.

Quotidienne

Anthropology, Congo + Culture, Family, School

Gotta love the French for coming up with a beautiful way to say something as normal as ‘daily‘.

The daily norm, the quotidienne, over here seems unworthy of blogging to you all. But every so often it dawns on me that what I now consider ‘normal’ for our life and work here, is not what most of you consider ‘normal’. Here’s today’s random bit of normal.

Kent is almost home after a 10-day journey to Eastern Europe. Every time he leaves inevitably something vital breaks. I think the machines in our house must feel his absence. They know the genius is gone from the house and decide to take a vacation while they can. Quick! The simpleton is in charge, time to play! Makes me feel a bit like the substitute teacher trying to keep relative control of the ruthless teenaged mechanisms in our household.

So this time the TV monitor gave up (which works for listening to music, but not for watching anything).

And the water pump, which allows us hot water.

I’m not complaining. Heating kettles for bucket baths and watching movies on my computer are not suffering or anything. I felt pretty good finding new solutions to keep up our movie night routine.

I also felt pretty good managing to speak to our guards in Swahili, and understand about 80% of what they said to me (they were probably speaking nice and slow for me =) they are such nice guys that way).

I now know I am a pretty exhausted single parent. I have NO idea how those ladies on TV, who single-handedly worked 2 jobs and raised 6 kids, survived. I need more sleep, but I sleep less as I know each wail for a drink of water or lightning strike in the distance is ultimately my sole responsibility.

Last night at 4:30am I decided to get up and cut our connection to the city grid. I’m one of those people who sees the flash of lightning and starts counting the miles. One, one thousand. Two, one thousand. Three, one thousand… At four the windows start shaking with the CRACK of a peal of thunder. All the previous ones were between 8 and 15 miles away. But four is plenty close for me! Time to shut off the grid. Our house isn’t high enough to be hit directly, but we’ve lost some equipment in the past when our neighbors were hit just because the grid gets super-charged.

So I cut the power and stood to watch the light show by the back hallway window. Suddenly our neighborhood was struck, and it is always more amazing when you happen to be watching out the window! My cheek was pressed to the right window of the back door as it started shaking violently with the very essence of power. I heard a loud zapping/buzzing and ran to check that our colleague and guest hadn’t seen any arcs in her room (where we have in the past). She was worried for our power system being blown. We went and checked it out. No smoke. Lights working. I was so thankful to be up to disconnect the house just in time. Being a light sleeper has finally paid off!

The kids did great through their first week of school. It was good for us to return to familiar routines. Anna loves running for the cookie jar at snack time and munching on top of the desk while I read (Alice in Wonderland for this month) before recess in the yard. The boys ramble off to their new friend’s house next door in the lazy afternoons and all is quiet while Anna sleeps (or sings) in her own bed.

They grow up so fast! Joel is doing great in his reading. Some invisible switch must have flipped over the summertime, and he is motivated and doing great! He even thought the first couple ‘cat sat on the mat’ books were too easy! Anna has learned to spell and write her name. James has his 7th loose tooth! Bye bye little babies… hello big kids! Each phase has fun parts of their own.

There’s a chicken squawking in the backyard. The neighobor’s hen is lost again. Our guards are great chicken-wranglers. It really is an art that takes practice. They convince it to fly back over the wall. Hopefully the right wall…

With the rain pouring down at 6 this morning it is cool, humid and cloudy. It might as well be a snow-day. The rain turns the roads into slick mud that might as well be ice (except that ice doesn’t get ruts that can drown a semi truck…). So everyone pretty much freezes in time, hanging out wherever they happen to be. The meetings can wait. The classes can wait. The job will wait. Church can wait. Everything waits for the end of the rain (which is usually less than 2 hours btw). If you want the road to yourself or feel like singing a solo in church, go out anyway. Today I expect our workers will show up an hour or so late. Makes me want to sit in my bathrobe and drink hot chocolate with marshmallows and soak in the slow morning slowly. Rushing doesn’t really pay here anyway.

And our days roll on. A funny jumble of quotidienne.