Coming to a Conclusion

Another great day with a lot of excitement.  Teachers arrived ready to dive into today's topics.  As is the case when in Haiti you adjust when things don't go quite as planned.  But that's one of the reasons I love working and being in Haiti- everything is at a different pace and things happen when they happen.  Our late breakfast turned out to be good on timing because of our late lunch.  

I would say that on this trip I have had to step out of my food comfort zone.  And what I mean by that is having meals cooked by the host mamas for the teachers.  It is quite an experience to actually see the goat you will have for lunch tomorrow being "prepared" today.  It really has been delicious and interesting at the same time.

Our day got cut short by a torrential downpour and the raindrops on the metal roof made it nearly impossible to hear.  So we resorted to doing math games with decks of cards.  All in a day in Haiti.

One of the things we are doing as a group from the States is asking what are the teachers finding helpful that they would want to implement in the classroom when school starts in a couple of weeks.  Today a young man stood up and expressed his appreciation for spending time with other teachers to collaborate with same grade level teachers.  They are having intentional time to discuss and share ideas with one another and that seems to be a new idea for them.  

Someone else said that our team has been challenging them to answer their own questions by discussing challenges and issues that they face as teachers.  This has been intentional on our part- we don't want to presume to have answers that they are looking for but instead open dialog with each other and us at times, to find the answers.  Hearing those kinds of responses let us know that we are accomplishing some of our goals.  It is important for the teachers to not look at us as someone who has all the answers and that they do not.

Tomorrow is a celebration and certificate day for the Educator Exchange.  We will have fun celebrating all their hard work of the past four days.

Depending on the roads from today's rain, we are going to try to make it up to Desire to visit the kids up there.  All of the mamas are enjoying a much deserved break from their responsibilities as Global Orphan is sponsoring a retreat for the area mamas at a nice beach resort.  Pastor Jeannot as well as the other project pastors have recruited people from their congregations to stay with the kids while the mamas are on their retreat.  So we will get a report on the road conditions in the morning when Pastor Jeannot joins us at the Exchange.