Three for Thursday (well, it was when I wrote this)

I dropped the ball last Friday—no Five for Friday. Sorry about that. We’re running so ragged right now that I think I’ll just post when I can. Hitting on Fridays is going to be too tough. Here are a few cool snapshots for you.

--Empty houses. A normal year at RVA features families in every single domicile on campus. Our first year this place was so packed that they put us down in the rat house. Fortunately, no one has to live there this year because there is ample housing. Unfortunately, ample housing means that we are understaffed. On my walk home from school, there are four empty houses within view, and it’s a bit discouraging to think of the warm bodies who should be/could be helping out while living in those homes. Pray for us and the staff who are here.

--Hanging out a bus window. This might sound like something our students would do, but no, it was me last night. Wednesday is our day to travel to Nairobi for sports competition. At one of the police checkpoints, the metal, spiked barriers were so tight together that our bus driver clipped one of them. We were unsure whether the tire was punctured or not, so every few minutes or so, I stuck my whole torso out the window and looked back at the right rear tire to see if we were okay. We were. But I got a lot of stares from the Kenyans roadside. (And we won our JV girls basketball game with a furious fourth quarter—35-17)

--Creative writing class. My new prep for this term is Creative Writing. My first big project was to write a One-Act Play. The students did fine with the assignment, although one girl wrote about the murder outside of a McDonald’s. The young woman who was murdered? A waitress at McDonald’s. Hold on a second. McDonald’s doesn’t have waitresses. Well, you know that and I know that, but many of our MK’s here at RVA have been to so few McDonald’s in their lives that they don’t understand the basic format of a fast-food joint. An interesting reminder of the kind of kids I’m dealing with here.