Hello Everybody,
Life at RVA is crazy, busy, stressful and lots of fun. The people are all very nice and friendly. I have been welcomed with open arms into their school. Right now I am on midterm break. That means that the term is half way over. (yay!)
That last few weeks have been very crazy. The sophomore class is doing Valentine’s sales. We were selling cupcakes, Hershey’s peanut butter cookies, roses (single and a dozen), singing Valentines (groups of 10th graders choose Valentine’s songs and sang them to people. ‘Kay, so say I wanted to get one for mom. I would choose which song I wanted and then write it down and give them mom’s name and tell them where mom lives. They would go find mom and sing her the song. (it can be very embarrassing if they get you during chai time or lunch.) Also we sold tickets to a pancake house (romantic pancake dinner) and lots of little valentine’s things, cards, heart shaped puzzles, long pretzel sticks with caramel wrapped around it covered in chocolate and rolled in sprinkles (pretty and yummy), and lots of little things that little kids would call treasures and my dad would call junk. We sold 1700 cupcakes and a lot of cookies (not as many as the cupcakes but a lot of them).
Last week was delivery week where we gave out all the cupcakes and cookies. It was very good for getting to know who lived where and what all the dorms are called. This week we are giving out all the roses. Our class sponsors (they chose at some time (freshmen year I think) to be our sponsors and help us out with all the sales and activities that we do as a class (that also includes senior safari when we go to the coast and get a nice break) are going down to Nairobi to get the roses for us.
Some of you may have heard about the camping trip my dorm went on. It was lots of fun. We went to a camp called Freedom Base. It’s called that because during the war for Kenya’s independence that was one of the bases that the freedom fighters would go to. We got there Friday evening and pretty much just ate dinner and set up camp. We also played a few games. Compared to American camps it’s not much but it’s not too bad of a camp. It has 5 cabins (but it’s smarter to sleep out side because of mosquitoes), a high ropes course (we didn’t get to do it L) bathrooms (long drops) and various kinds of team building obstacles. We did those on Saturday morning.
- One was these three platform thingies. One was 5 ft off the ground, one was 7 and the other was like 3. It was a trust fall. A person would climb on to whatever height they wanted and would fall backwards into her teammate’s arms.
- Another one was this 3x3 wooden square and we had to get everybody on it. It didn’t work very well.
- Another was this wire that was attached to poles every 9 feet. It was zigzagged and at the end was the wire and a rope that started at the last pole (which was taller than the others) and went down to the very end of the wire. The goal was to have the entire team/dorm get across the whole thing using nothing but each other for balance, and at the end you had to have one person at the end of the wire holding the rope tight and the person walks across the wire with the rope above their head.
- Another one was two poles with a lot of rope in between. It looked a lot like a spider’s web. The goal was to get everybody through the rope hole. The challenge was you couldn’t point at a hole or it would become “closed”, you could only put three people through each hole, and eventually towards the end you could only have one person talking. (the talking part was very hard for my dorm.)
- Another one was a big rope made into a rectangle with lots of bottles inside the rectangle. The dorm was spilt up with everybody having a partner. One of the people would be blindfolded and the other had to yell to them how to get through the rectangle without stepping on a bottle. The challenge was that everybody was doing it at the same time so you had to listen for your partner’s voice. It was very hard.
- Another one was these two wires that made a V. A group of two would start at the beginning of the V holding each other’s hands above their heads. They would slowly start down the wires and as they got farther apart they would have to lean on each other more and more. The goal was to get to the end of the V. Nobody was able to do it because it took lots of arm muscles.
- The last one was the scariest. It was a 15 foot wall with no hand holds or foot holds the object was to get everybody up it. The first person was lifted up as high as we could reach. It was just enough for her to reach the top with her hands. She then had to pull herself up with her arms. Once she was up there it got easier. The next person was lifted up and she would be helped up by the girl who was already up there. Once there was four girls up there the first one had to go down. (so there could only be three girls at the top of the wall at a time). The challenge was to have enough strong people at the top to be able to get the girls up. But we were able to do it. The last person had to run up the wall and grab the other girls’ at the top hands. Eventually we slightly lowered one girl at the top down so she could reach a bit father down and she pretty much ended up hauling the last person up on her own strength.
After we did the team building things we went to one of the girl’s house (her parents pretty much owned Freedom base and her house was close by) we had some enchiladas and hung out for the rest of the afternoon. We were all dead tired because it was very hot there and the team building stuff was tiring. We left around 11 in the morning on Sunday after a small church service and a look back at what we did. We got back to school in the afternoon and even had time to finish our homework. (always a good thing). I’m trying to get pictures up on facebook but it’s not working very well.
During midterm I went to my guardian’s house. My first guardians are the Moffitts, friends who lived near us in Kenya and are great friends. My second guardians are the Goossens. They are friends whose daughter was in my kindergarten, second grade and third grade class. Friday I hung out in the afternoon. We watched Prince Caspian and got up to date on facebook. (the RVA facebook doesn’t get flair or anything that requires pictures really). For dinner we went out to an Ethiopian Restaurant where I saw one of the girls in my dorm.
On Saturday we hung out till noon then I went Java house where I hung out with the Rossingtons and played on a little playground thingie. It was lots of fun and I got some things my parents sent out for me. I got back at 3 and hung out some more. At 5 we went to an AIM missionary gathering. It was a fun little potluck and we played a few games, too. (for those of you who know what I’m talking about it was in the front yard of Eagle’s Nest, where the Stairs used to live, right by the big field.) When we got back we watched “Man from Snowy River”.
Sunday morning we went to the AIC (Africa Inland Church) church nearby. It was the one that we went to when we lived here. Then when we got back we relaxed after eating lunch. Around 3 we went to Junction and looked around, got some yummy ice cream and had fun. When we got back, Natalie and I went to a youth group thing that she goes to and we saw Naomi Goossen and a friend who goes to RVA. When we got back we watched “Return to Snowy River”.
This morning we woke up late and had some waffles. Then Natalie worked on homework and I typed this letter. And now you are officially up to date! Yay! I’m going to go help make some cookies.
Talk to you all later
Emily
