Nov. 6, 2015
This is an excerpt from an email to family at home in the US:
Things have gone as well as can be expected this week - thnaks to all of your prayers and support. The flights went smoothly, but were very full. (Thanks Boeng for building good planes.) Also, the airlines did not give us the problems I feared with visas.
As I write Naomi is peacefully sleeping, which did not happen the first 2 nights. We had homesickness until exhaustion set in at about 3 or 4 am those noghts! But during the day its differnt. She does great and Isaac has been wonderfully positive, and optomistic about our experiences so far. I get the feeling he's happy to not be in school. He's also remarked several times that Kigali is nicer than Guatemala. And I think being able to watch European pro soccer on large flat screen TVs here enchants him.
The house where we are staying is in a well-kept, quiet and very safe feeling part of town. there is a security guard-gardener, Francoise,, here 24hrs. a lovely housekeeper, Grace, is here mornings, and other guests are interesting young people from Sweden and Holland. The owner, Matt, is from North Carolina and his business is Jibu, a drinking water distibution co. Pat, the acquaintance through whom I found the house, let me practice driving his manual shift through Kigali traffic today. The rest of our travel in town has been by bus and by taxi.
In the afternoon we went to the school (Green Hills Academy) for the first time. Happy, the admissions lady, (Yes, that's her name) was there and informed us Isaac and Naomi should come tomorrow, Friday, to take the placement tests. Naomi and Isaac remarked about how ugly the "sports uniforms" are, and Naomi was alresdy dreaming up ways to make the frumpy tie & blouse formal uniform look fashionable. Happy informed us the kids must bring sport shoes on sport days and otherwise they must wear all black shoes. Isaac asked if all black sports shoes qualify, and I was surprised that Happy sais "yes!" as long as they are all black.
We walked aroind the school grounds, looked in the classrooms and met a few of the teachers. The school day had just ended, but there were lots of kids there both for extra activities and because many students are boarding students. We did not see any other "whites", but we did see several expat looking Asian students. We walked out to the athletic fields where there was a ton of activity, which seemed to make Isaac nearly gleeful! there is construction going on to build basketball courts, a large group of boys Isaacs age playing soccer, at least to volleyball games going on and in the small building at one end we heard the traditional dancing class going on (I.e. lots of drumming).. The dance class ended and children of all ages poured out in their sports uniforms. We talked to the instuctor, Jaquline, for a bit about the program. (I think Naomi will love it.)…
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