The last 12 hours deserves a blog post of its very own I've decided. While life here can be very different and sometimes difficult- it is certainly never dull. Today my day was filled with a school-wide olympic ceremony, a kindergarten christmas pageant, me finding myself carrying live chickens from my house to school, watching middle and high school students wrap those chickens up like presents, and then having a snowball fight in 70+ degree weather.
Allow me to elaborate...
Being at an international school means that when they do olympics in P.E. class, then can actually represent their own countries and compete for them. The students have been doing olympic competitions in P.E. for the past few weeks and today the whole school took part in the "closing ceremonies." The whole school went out to the field across the street and gathered with the flag of their own country. The school had 13 different countries represented! They then walked together with their flag and came in to the auditorium of the church across the street. We had a big ceremony announcing the 3rd,2nd, and 1st place winners of each competition and they played the national anthem of the 1st place winner's country. It was so neat!
Every week we have elementary chapel. Every other week chapel is lead by a different class and this week it was kindergarten's turn. We have been preparing a Christmas pageant all week to perform for our chapel today. Everyone had at least one line and had (some kind of) costume. Creating costumes wasn't very easy, but we got creative! Our angels wore fairy wings and aluminum foil halos, the wisemen (and wisewomen) wore curtains as capes- you get the idea. While they had a bit of trouble remembering where to go after they said their lines, I think my loud whispering of cues across the stage helped and they of course were just adorable.
Something I don't think I've mentioned on my blog yet is that besides teaching kindergarten every day, I have gotten involved in being a Young Life leader with the high schoolers. Young Life is a youth program that is quite popular in the states, but also is an international program, so we have it here in Kigali. Tonight we had our Christmas club. Winter here means the temperature might get down to 65 degrees, but mostly it is just really hot all the time. So, we (the other American YL leaders and I, who have actually experienced snow) decided we wanted to give these kids a true wintery Christmas experience. So we made snow balls out of panty hoes and flour- filling them with the flour and tying knots to create snow balls (essentially flour bombs). Then we had them play capture the flag with snow balls. What made the game even more interesting is that the flags were frozen inside blocks of ice that had to melted before they could win.
Buuuuut before the snowball fight we had another "fun" activity. We told the kids we wanted them to wrap some christmas presents we had gotten for the guards. 6 of them volunteered to be gift wrappers. Then we brought out the "gifts." They were live chickens. The students of course freaked out, but also loved it and were actually successful in wrapping them in butcher paper and yarn. And no worries- no animals were harmed in the process... but they will be very appreciated and very tasty to the guards who are receiving them.
...All in a day's work.
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| Processing in for the olympic ceremony |
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| Ready for chapel to start |
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| Singing at chapel! |
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| Chicken at my house |
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| Chickens in the road |
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| Chicken in a package |
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| Chicken #2 in an even neater package |
