This morning dawned sunny and full of birdsong. The sun shone buttery through the pale yellow curtains on our bedroom window (“our” being Sara, Emily and myself) . We had our first breakfast by Besa, and (for all of us but Scott) our first taste of the famed Ethiopian COFFEE!
As we breakfasted, the students began to arrive at the gate in their lovely purple and red (oh yes) uniforms and mingled outside around the campus. When Sara and I ventured outside, the fourth and fifth graders approached us and held out tiny hands to be shaken, asking
“wrat ees yoor name?”

In small groups and classes with the ninth and tenth graders today we were slightly dismayed to find that their English skills had been somewhat exaggerated. Fortunately, our team is full of flexible people who excel at charades, and communication and friendship were established.
Sharon taught physics, drawing airplanes on the board and explaining lift, drag, thrust and weight. Her students worked in teams to construct balsa wood gliders which would demonstrate these forces, and at the end of class she taught everyone to make paper airplanes so they would have something fun to take home.

Teaching English was very difficult today, as I had prepared for students who were near fluent, and was not ready to go back to very basics. I scrapped my original plans and resorted to repetition and pronunciation practice, as well as basic vocabulary. There were two boys who were far ahead of the rest of the class, and it was difficult to keep them from dominating. They were especially helpful though, as I muddled my way through pronouncing the student’s names.
In general, my English class was painful, but I learned a lot about the student’s education so far and had a good idea of what to plan for future classes. I spoke with Pastor Matthews about what their usual activities are in English, and was told that their reading and writing is far better than their listening and speaking, which holds with the fact that they have never had native English speakers as instructors. Tomorrow I plan to write an “essay” prompt on the board, and give them time to answer it.

All the teachers reported that it was difficult to get the girls to speak up and participate in class, they are very accustomed to deferring to the boys in the classroom, but in the yard, they seem to get along well.

In the meeting this evening, the team decided it would be wise to change the schedule to allow the students to go home earlier and to keep the academic classes in the morning before lunch. So tomorrow we will start out anew with the doctored schedule, and we’ll need your prayers more than ever.

Ethiopia is beautiful and the students are diverse and interesting people, we can’t thank MPPC enough for giving us this opportunity.