Road to Rwanda---Confucius Birth Place

  If one of my previous Face Book  posts shows up in my timeline inbox that might be interesting, I am trying to post it here.  The date on this post is May 1, 2017.  Confucius has been the main force in Chinese philosophical thought since about 400 B.C. I am talking a long long time and a very pervasive force. Yesterday we went to his birth place. By regular train it would have been 2 hours. By fast train it took us 20 minutes (price about $4.50). By fast, I do mean fast. It said it was going about 300 kph. (Rick says that is about 185 mph.) When you were on the inside of the train, the terrain was going by quickly but not at a dizzying pace. However, standing on the platform with a through train buzzing past was quite exhilarating. The town of QuFu itself had a more "Chinese" feel to it than what the big towns have. It was a long day of seeing old buildings and a beautiful forest with hundreds of huge headstones spaced through out. (As we were viewing the forest/cemetery fr

Road to Rwanda---My Friend Sarah

  My friend Sarah, who was so very, very sick and you prayed for a month or so ago, came to visit tonight with her daughter and fiance.  She came to visit for a special reason.  As soon as they got here, they connected to our wifi and posted this announcement on the School's WhatsApp!  What a privilege! You can see how healthy and full of joy she is.  She thanks all of you for praying for her.  She prayed with us before she and her family left just now, back out into the rain to go home.

Road to Rwanda----Serving Meals

 You know I did not start to cook until I was almost 60 years old.  I have no idea how I raised 4 children to maturity.  I remember at one point in Taiwan when they were young that I had to put my foot down and tell them they could only eat out once a day.  Paul (our eldest), being the social creature that he is, learned to cook so he could feed his friends in Taiwan (1988-1995) when they came over....I always made sure I had expensive boxes of Hamburger Helper on the shelf for him to use, but I personally usually did not even fix that much of a meal.  Purity from about age 4 on, would get up in the middle of the night and fix herself a tuna fish sandwich and eat it all herself because she could not stand the thought of any of us touching her food.  Peter existed on fruit, whole boxes of kiwis, etc.  Because of her CP, Peace had to have soft textured foods or she could not chew them, so I remember making her scrambled eggs. In Senegal (2003-2010) I tried to fix a Sunday noon meal, whic

Memories--from 2017

  Finished our laundry for the first time in China (2017-2019). In Panama (2010-2016)I had to go to the back of building OUTSIDE to do my laundry. Here I have a machine right in my itty bitty kitchen....with only HOT running water??? After one is done washing, then you go out onto the balcony and hang your clothes on hangers to let them dry. This is different from Taipei (1988-1995). There we had bamboo poles levitating 4 stories up at our apartment. You strung your clothes on these poles. Until I learned how to "string" rather than just flop the clothes over the poles, I kept losing my underwear to the balcony below. I then had to go down to the apartment below with a corresponding piece of underwear and mime asking for it back. Maybe I can at least say the words now.

Road to Rwanda----Jesus is greater

  A rather strange cultural/spiritual incident yesterday in school.   The students were getting comfortable on the couch and bean bag chairs for a documentary about the silk trade in China.   However, I could not see the face of one of the boys sitting on the bean bag chair on the floor.   (I have to keep an eye on them, or they might fall asleep during a video. Haha) I told him to move.   There was a whispered confrontation between him and the girl sitting on the couch which was beside the bean bag chair.   No one moved. I asked what the problem was.   The boy passionately stated that the girl had stepped over his legs splayed on the floor in getting to her seat and he would not move until she had stepped back over his legs (????)   He went on to explain that if she did not do this, he would never grow any taller (every teen age boy’s nightmare).   The girl refused to acquiesce to his request, stating that it was utter foolishness.   The class then sat and waited for me to resolve the

Road to Rwanda.....Names

  This week I tackled getting my students to coordinate the use of Works Cited with intext citations.   They both require listing the last name of the author.   To my confusion, the results were quite a failure.   The students often listed the authors’ first   or even middle names in formatting their essays??? I am used to the confusion from English as a Second Language students who do not recognize what we would say were American “first names”.   My essays from students in China, did not know that “Bruce” as opposed to “Smith” were given names, not family names.   They simply did not have enough English.   But my students here in Rwanda speak excellent English and recognize, use, and are named English names. I have also been confused ever since I got my student list of names from the school office a year and a half ago.   The class lists alphabetized by the student’s FIRST   name.   This just is not done, but I never got a clear answer.   So, being me, I finally dug deeper.   When I

Road to Rwanda----Valentine's Day Party...Rwanda style

 My grade 6 students engineered a Valentine's Day Party.  These are 11 and 12 year old kids, but for the second year in a row, they decided that they were going to have a party....Warning: No adults were involved in the set up! The parents of one of the members of the class owns a restaurant, so it was easy to make reservations for the night of Valentine's Day from 4:30 to 7:30.  They then invited 4 adults to come: Rick and I , and their math and science teachers who are a couple.  We happily accepted, but were also not quite sure how this was going to turn out.   We were a little late in getting strated...after all this is Africa, but were all present by 5:30, having traveled by foot, car, taxi, and mototaxi.  The three male students were the ones who conceived of and executed the party and they had a definite plan.  They collected $5 for the food from the 7 students who came (only one of the 6th graders could not attend).  We then ordered our food. They wrote it out and deliv

Road to Rwanda---A friend is sick

   Over a year ago last October a young lady stopped me as I left school.  She wanted to apply for a position at the school, but the gate guard would not let her in.  She walked with me as I started to go home. Her English was good and she said she was a preschool teacher and she wanted to work at VVA.  After we talked a bit, the principal drove by and stopped and picked me up.  I told the principal that the lady wanted a job.  Almost a week went by and the principal came and asked me about the lady I had mentioned because the school really did need more aids.  I remembered her name and said she talked like she was capable. Her application was still sitting in the guard shack.  She was contacted and hired.  During the past year we have been friendly.  We felt like we had bonded through her application process.  Now, a year later, she invited us to come to her home.  So, this afternoon (Sunday) (this was written in August) we waited for her to send a moto taxi that she knew to come get

Road to Rwanda----Saturday Outing

  Last Saturday we were invited to a picnic to celebrate some friends’ engagement.   It involved about 45 minutes by car, then 20-30 minutes by boat and finally a hike up a VERY steep incline to their remote undeveloped property.   The car ride was on some of the worst roads I have been on in my lifetime of travel with bad roads all over the world. The boat ride involved the engine cutting out halfway enroute (both coming and going….the boat owners realized they needed to do something and traded for a   bigger boat on our return trip….but I assumed used the same rather faulty motor??)   The hike up the cliff was only accomplished because one of the young 20 something volunteers at the school took my hand and arm and hefted me up….and back down.   Rick made it on his own, but he was not able to do the hefting needed for me…..we are getting old.   The view during the picnic was gorgeous.   I took a nap on a blanket while some of the others went back down the cliff and went swimming in th