May 20, 2008--the first time I'm actually posting on the day!!

This morning we went to St. Andres College. It's a Catholic Secondary School. We met with the director (a Rwandese priest) who told us some about the school. It was founded in 1957 by missionaries from Belgium to be a school for children who wanted to go on to university. It started out as an all boys school, but in the 70s they started accepting girls. I thought it was interesting that they do three years (7^th -9^th) grades all the same and then they start taking classes in what they are interested in or their section, which is kind of similar to high schools in the U.S. They have 725 students and about 31% are female. More than half of the children are day students, leaving less than half that are boarding students. There are 35 teachers and all are qualified; some even have their Masters. Since they have other religious, such as Muslim and Jehovah's Witness they offer mass at 7:30 every morning, but it is a religious time for whatever your religion might be.

Angel and I were placed in a S1 or 7^th grade English class, since the only classes in English are English classes. We noticed once again how respectful the children are. They were learning about tenses the teacher did a great job of keeping the students involved. They gave very 7^th grade examples, like “I was sleeping while the teacher spoke”. They were a pretty funny bunch. Then she asked us to do some teaching. We first told them about ourselves and our backgrounds and answered some questions. We showed them pictures, and I of course showed them my cows! They were very impressed by how big they were and couldn't understand that we didn't drink G's milk. They loved to see little Bernadine and couldn't believe she was only two days old in the picture! Then after they were all out of questions the teacher asked them to sing for us. Two boys went up front and we were expecting a traditional song and maybe a dance- they started singing AND doing the dance to Souldya Boy! It was so funny! Then two others got up and sang American songs. Then some girls did a traditional song and dance, and then did another and danced back to us and pulled us up to dance with them! We didn't know what to do...it's a lot harder than it looks! We were sufficiently embarrassed for the day. Then the teacher told them that since they sang for us we would sing for them- umm NO!!! :) She had trouble understanding that we didn't have traditional songs in our culture. So instead of singing, we taught and played Simon Says. They loved it! They were very good, and Angel even scrounged up a prize for our winner. Then we taught some English. We did some problems on the board and they did very well. Again, I'm so impressed with their language skills!

Then we got the chance to meet the Minister of Education in Rwanda. We didn't have our meeting confirmed until Sunday, so it was very nice to be able to do that. She is like the Secretary of Education in the U.S., so we were very lucky for some of her time. I was asked to be the 'spokesperson' for the group, so I told her about what we had been studying and a project that I had done on the MDGs and Rwanda. I also told her about our observations and what we had inferred about education in Rwanda. She was very pleased with our findings and had a lot of good information for us. She was very friendly and very interested in our work. She said they have almost met the MDG for primary education for all, as they are at 96% enrollment. She did talk about some of the struggles they are facing, such as keeping girls in school. She couldn't stay for long, but it was very great to meet her.

Then we FINALLY got back to the orphanage! When we first got there a young girl came up to me and showed me her fingernails. She still had a little pink on! It was pretty touching, since that was the color I had painted, so she remembered it was me! At first we took some time to meet with Gisimba who is the legal guardian for the children. He gave us some very good information for the website. Then we got to play with the Frisbees- our gift for the night. The kids had a very good time with them and they picked it up so quickly. We played for over an hour and we were beat! They have so much energy! They have a soocer (or football) field that they named Mosquito Stadium, and we took that over as our massive Frisbee throw. We had a lot of fun and the kids did a great job of sharing. Hopefully they keep them around for awhile, I know at my house they're lost in a couple days! Having a specific activity made the language barrier not seem so bad. I don't know what we'd do without Dominic though! Leaving is always so hard, but once it's dark there's really not a whole lot we can do. At least we'll be back tomorrow!

Then we went to the Mille Collines (Hotel Rwanda) for dinner. It is a very upscale place. They had a live band so that was fun to watch. It seems to have a pretty happening night life and a lot of the people seemed very high class. It was kind of eerie to be in the hotel, even though we have heard from everyone that the movie isn't really a very good representation of what happened. It also looks nothing like what it does in the movie! We were happy to have some more American food again!