Sunday, July 3, 2011

Beginning of Week 3

Hello!

     So today is Sunday, the beginning of week 3.  The end of week 2 was incredible.  I have really begun to get to know more of the students, which is great.  On Wednesday I played guitar for the first, second, and third graders.  They loved it.  They sang and danced and now whenever one of them sees me he points at me and goes "Kevin! (while making a guitar strumming motion), which is awesome.  I taught music to the seventh graders again on Friday and then they had a lecture on the Catholic faith, as they do every Friday afternoon.  Fr. Chris told the students that if they wanted to learn some music for mass, and some mass parts, that they should come outside with me, and so 30-40 students followed me outside, and I taught them the Alleluia from the PC 10:30 Mass, which was pretty cool.  They picked it up quickly, and this morning they sang it at mass, which was nice.  There are a few students who are picking up how to play the guitar quite quickly.  At first I was trying to teach a whole bunch of them how to play all at once, but it was very impractical as I only brought one guitar.  I have decided to teach a few of them as much as I can in the next few weeks, so that they will know more.  When I leave they can teach more students how to play.  I just want to get one of them good enough at it so that they can play at mass.  This is quite a feat for four weeks time, but I am going to go for it all the same.

     Yesterday, we went to a soccer tournament that the school team was playing in.  It was incredible.  There were so many people there!  I was half expecting to see some other American missionaries there, but there were none, and so we were quite an attraction.  These little kids followed us around everywhere, and one of the school staff told us that some of the people thought we were sponsoring a team because, well, we were white, and we were taking lots of pictures.  The boys team wore the jerseys we brought from the NOVA Soccer Club, some of the cleats we brought.  The girls team wore some cleats and used one of the balls that was donated by the Attleboro Youth Soccer organization.  It was pretty cool.  I took lots of pictures.  One of the students leaned over to me between the two games they played and said that the team was very grateful for the jerseys.  He said they were especially grateful because they won the first game they played in them.  It was very nice.  I wasn't there when they actually gave the equipment to the teams, but Tommy said that the kids were very, very happy to be receiving all of it, so thanks again to all who contributed!





     So the boys team played in two games, and they are very good, to say the least.  They won the first game (I believe this was the score)  2-0, and tied the second game 1-1.  They would have won but they let in a goal in the last few minutes, allowing the Jesuit school, St. Ignatius Loyola, to score.  I found it amusing that even here in Africa there are still rivalries between the orders.  They play three games today, which we could not attend, but they have a good chance of winning.

      I organized the building of a ping pong table the other day!  It's pretty cool - we had legs built and then laid an old chalkboard on top and that's it!  The kids use it a lot after school.  You can see pictures on facebook.

     At mass this morning, there was a dancing procession before the priest on his way into mass, which was neat; very African.  The students wore long sheets that had images of Mary and the Child Jesus and crosses on them as skirts during the procession.  It was great to see that part of African Culture.  On a separate note, Kenya does not have a stable power grid, and so we had a few dinners by candlelight this week.  It is pretty cool, except when you want to use the internet, but that's ok.  I just end up doing about two or three long blog posts a week, instead of short ones every day.  We were having dinner last night, and the power was out.  It came back on right in the middle of dinner so we blew out the candles, and as soon as we did, the lights went back out.  It was funny, annoying, and ironic all at the same time.
 
      I have been going to night prayer with the Dominicans, and it is pretty nice.  It's very quiet and so it's a nice way to end the day.  They have been doing that by candle light a lot too.  We don't fraternize with the Dominicans all that often, maybe once every few days we run into them, but tommorow night they are having a barbecue for us in honor of independence day.  Roast meat and Tusker (local Kenyan beer) were mentioned so it sounds like it should be fun.  I will listen to the Boston Pops on my iTunes tommorow, and sing for America.  "O Beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain.......!"

Thanks again for reading!  If I am not addressing anything that you would like to know about, please just comment, and I will.

God Bless you, and God Bless America!!!!!!

There are more pictures at

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150698780260089.700236.774375088&l=277b945520

Kevin

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