JV Soccer / Football End of Season Celebration

The Trophy!

The Whole Team

Alex coached the JV soccer/football team this past term. They had a great season. The team won a trophy for best sportsmanship in the league (voted by all the league coaches) - what an honor! We celebrated the end of season with nachos, soda, and ice cream sundaes. I don't think I've ever enjoyed serving food more than when I served these 18 boys! I didn't even get any photos of the food because they ate so fast!! It was a true joy for Alex to coach this team - it was definitely a highlight of term one. Over the course of the evening, the guys enjoyed sharing stories from the season.

Sunday School Outreach

The preK-6 Sunday School classes used their offering money collected over the term to purchase food and supplies for the poor. They put together 60 bags which included: flour, sugar, salt, tea, margerine, rice, soap, flashlights, candy. The children put the bags together "bucket-brigade" style (see photos). It was quite a production! I loved that each child from preschool to grade 6 was a part of the action! The goal was very motivating for our children to remember to bring their offering each week.

Angel Alert: The Night that Heaven Came Down

The K-6 children put on the musical, "Angel Alert." We spent about 7 weeks preparing for the production. The story is of the multitude of angels waiting and waiting for instructions from God to go to the sheperds to announce the birth of Christ. Throughout the musical, the whole Christmas story is told: Mary, Joseph, Baby Jesus, Shepherds, Kings and of course angels were all part of the spectacle! The K-4 children (shown in front in these photos) whom I teach, sang 5 songs, complete with choreography. The 5-6 graders sang all 9 songs plus they were the speakers/actors. The show took about an hour and we presented it during our last Sunday morning worship service of the term (yesterday). The children were amazing - I was so proud of them. It was fun to work toward a goal in my music classes these last two months.

AP Biology Class

Alex has really enjoyed teaching AP Bio, even though it was one of his least favorite subjects in High School! It has been his hope to make the subject come alive for his students. There are 11 students in the class, and we've enjoyed having them over in small groups for dinner over the past week. Last night we had three senior guys for chicken curry and ice cream sundaes, but before we dove into the meal, Alex toured them around our gardens. They have been studying plants, so he took the opportunity to use our garden as a teaching tool. Last week when one group was here, he was talking about cotyledons and Abby interjected, "Daddy, what are cotyledons?" They thought that was hysterical and cute. Future AP Bio student in the making... One of the things that I love about Alex is his curiousity for the natural world and the way that he can get others (me and the kids, especially), interested in the beauty and magnificence in the details of God's Creation.

More on Food

Things we make from scratch here that we didn't before:

granola

yogurt

cream cheese

cottage cheese

buttermilk

tortillas

tortilla chips

English muffins

maple syrup

chocolate sauce

bread (whole wheat, french, rolls, etc.)

breadcrumbs

croutons

salsa

guacamole

applesauce

Thoughts on Giving (by Alex)

At our staff meeting today, we heard news from an African church in Nigeria that is very committed to missions. Although the congregation is from an especially poor community (which is saying something in Africa), one third of the church members are sent out as missionaries within Africa: for every three families in the church, two of them agree to support the third so they can minister to others. The two families set aside a portion of rice at every meal in support of the third family. Then all the rice that has been set aside each week is collected. One third is distributed as food to the missionary families, another third is given to the missionary families to share with those to whom they are ministering, and the last third is sold in the market and the proceeds used for whatever other expenses the missionaries have.

Whether you are a Christian or not, this raises some challenging questions. Would two unrelated families in the U.S. ever agree to support a third to do something important? If so, what would that something be? What might we value enough to commit to giving away 1/3 of our income in support of it? If the answer is "nothing", what does it reveal about us and what we value? If the answer is something other than "nothing", what keeps us from doing it? What things are of real, lasting value?

Carnival

Saturday night, Student Council sponsored a Carnival Night. (6:30-7:30 for Titchies and 8-10 for grades 7-12). Students dress up and participate in games where they receive candy as prizes. All Titchies are matched with a big brother or big sister from the High School and they attend Carnival in pairs. Abby and her big sister went as fairies. We were truly impressed with the creativity of the costumes (you can't just run out to Target for costumes and props). Here are a few highlights:

Who's that little fairy?

Abby and her big sister

Abby's first grade buddies with their big brothers

Some lovely princesses

(Kindergarteners with their big sisters - two of whom are in our caring community group)

Who's that handsome wolf? And that royal king?

Playing a game where you have to pick up a pice of candy with chopsticks - pretty tricky!

Face Painting

For our NC / ACC friends - How hysterical is this??

These 10th grade boys are currently reading "Lord of the Flies" in English Class

Town Trip to Nairobi

On Saturday, we were town trip escorts. Once or twice a month, RVA organizes a town trip for students and staff. A bus leaves RVA at 9am and arrives at the mall, Village, one hour later. You have from 10-3 to spend at the mall, and then you arrive back at RVA by 4pm. Each trip takes two staff members to be official escorts (who get to travel for free instead of paying 550KSH or 8USD), though the work is minimal as the students are quite independent at the mall. This is no ordinary mall. Besides the shops and large outdoor foodcourt, there is also a movie theater (only seniors are allowed to go to movies), a bowling alley, a mini-golf course, and a waterpark! We had a fun morning playing mini-golf as a family. It reminded us of our summer vacations in New England. But we didn't keep score - which is quite different from our competitive summer family golf games! We ate lunch and then Alex supervised the kids in the play area while I grocery shopped at Nakumat. It took one hour to shop and 45 minutes to check out (which was partly due to crowds, but also due to a computer failing in the first line I had waited in! Needless to say, its a fun outing, but exhausting as well. Nairobi is hot, filled with pollution, and it feels like a long, hard drive. Also, one of the challenges of visiting this very western, consumerism focused mall (what mall isn't consumerism focused?) is the vast contrast that we see along the way. On the one hour ride to Nairobi, all you see is poverty: donkeys pulling carts, side of the road markets which are comprised of shacks, very difficult living conditions, barefoot children, etc. To drive through all of that and then to arrive at the posh mall is strange, to say the least.

Here we are playing mini-golf:

Giraffe Center

We visited the Giraffe Center (http://www.giraffecenter.org) in Nairobi with Chris and Sam. Its a breeding center for the Rothschild Giraffes which are endangered. It was the most up close and personal that we've gotten with any animals thus far. We even snuck a few kisses!

Chris and Sam

There were even a few warthogs here!

It took Andrew about 1/2 hour, but he finally summoned up the courage to feed the giraffe and loved it!

A kiss for Melissa

A Kiss for Alex

Abby couldn't get enough of feeding the giraffes!

The beautiful, graceful giraffe

Gardening

When Andrew's preschool class was learning about plants and how they grow last month, he brought home some carrot seeds -- and that was the beginning of our garden. David, our outside worker who tends to our yard on Fridays, helped Andrew plant his carrot seeds. Andrew loves spending time with David on Fridays. He follows him around much of the day, curious about what he's doing. Andrew also sprouted a bean in his class which he planted in our garden. David moved all of the roses over so that we could have more room. We now have potatoes, onions, carrots, spinach, and sukama wiki (spinach-like green) growing. Abby's teacher offered to give us some herbs from her garden: mint, rosemary, and parsley. When we brought these home to plant, David was very confused, "What are these?" When we told him what they were and what they were for, seasoning food and drink, he thought it was very strange. Why take up room in a garden for something that is not acutally food?! Kenyans mainly live off of potatoes, carrots and cabbage and use very little spices in their food. He still planted them for us. :) Andrew's carrots have sprouted. And now the challenge is to keep the monkeys and baboons away.

One of the reasons that we can now garden is that it has finally started raining. Starting in mid-October, we have received a lot of rain. Our favorite days are when it rains hard at night and is beautifully sunny during the day! However, sometimes the rain drizzles or pours throughout the days as well, which makes drying our laundry a challenge, to say the least! We are thankful for the rain - especially for what it means to the local Kenyans - that they can finally start cultivating their vegetables and that their animals have water to drink and grass on which to graze. Also, the campus has really come alive with beauty as the grass changing from brown to green. And the dust has settled (which has brought about mud season).

Multi-Cultural Day

The Flag Ceremony: The oldest child at RVA from a country carries his/her country's flag

Aunt Sam playing games for the "green team"

Twister?

10th Grade Boys Dorm

Playing the "Korean Stick Game"

No Kenyan celebration is complete without soda: Orange Fanta, yum!

K-4 Titchies singing "I Have Decided to Follow Jesus" in Swahili (Nimekubale Kumfuata Jesu)

Titchies singing

Our favorite Titchie!

A few weeks back, RVA celebrated MC Day. There is a great diversity here among the students. Students come from a wide variety of backgrounds and have lived in many different countries. MC Day includes a service/ceremony with singing, skits, and flags; team games (Olympic style); a luncheon feast; staff vs. student american football game; and fireworks. It was indeed a day to celebrate.

Caring Community: Scavenger Hunt

We meet with our Caring Community group about once/month. We just had our third gathering with them on Saturday night; and we challenged another tenth grade group to a photo scavenger hunt. The teams had one hour to rack up the points as they had to find and do various things on campus. Here are a few photos of the fun we had:

Forming a pyramid in front of Kiambogo

At the new gate

Can you tell what word they are spelling?

Silly pose in a guard post on the guard trail

Pine Wood Derby

Life at RVA never seems to stop! The weekdays are filled with classes, sports, ministry / outreach, spiritual development, and extracurricular activities like sports, band, drama, and choir. And when the weekend comes, we continue on! There are often events on Friday and Saturday nights and weekend daytime activities as well.

Last weekend was no exception with the annual Pine Wood Derby. This event has been going on for years and is a HUGE event. The students and adults have about one month to work on their cars before the big race day. The weekend began with registration on Friday afternoon, viewing on Friday night, races Saturday from 9am-3pm and the awards ceremony in the evening! It was all very high tech, with a computerized race track to keep track of places, times, heats, etc. Alex raced a car which he worked on with his brother, Chris. Sadly, Chris wasn't here the day we raced as he had already returned home.

Written by Alex (on PWD day last weekend):

Today was the Pinewood Derby. Students and staff have been working on their cars for about 6 weeks. That hard work resulted in the most amazing designs: a shopping cart, a coke can, a piece of pie, two cars that fit together, a submarine, two space shuttles (one the shuttle alone and the other with booster rockets and fuel tank), an incredibly detailed ATV, a drooling turtle, a flying pig (swine flew?), a winnebago that elevated its top and popped out a bunch of tents and canopies, and perhaps most amazingly, a working billiard table -- if you knocked the balls into the pockets then they ran in gutters down to the end where you could retrieve them! The latter even had the tiny spots along the sides of the table, inlaid wood, balls painted correct colors, cues, and cue chalk resting on the side rail. It was absolutely phenomenal!

As for me, I focused the design on speed rather than visual interest. All the cars have a maximum width, length, height, and weight, but I tried to come up with the fastest design I could within those constraints. The final product was quite streamlined (it was hard even for me to tell the front from the back), the wheels were ground down to be as narrow as possible, and the axle assembly was created from scratch to float on pinpoints. Then the car was carefully tuned to drive as straight as possible (to minimize scraping the sides of the lane, a major source of friction).

The track has 6 lanes and is about 60-75 feet long -- RVA apparently has the second longest Pinewood Derby track in the world (I have no idea how they figured that out). You race four times in your initial heat (4 different lanes), then four more times in the semifinals, then four more times in the finals, so it's a lot of runs down the track. The car ended up being not only the fastest car in its category (winning all 12 runs), but also the fastest car of the day, beating the second fastest car of the day by 1-2 feet each time. At the awards ceremony, we learned that it was fastest car in the history of the RVA track, having once made it down in 3.775 seconds. I already have about 3-4 ideas for making a faster car, so it's a shame we won't be here next year!

Andrew's favorite car: the space shuttle

Abby's favorite car: the ballet slipper

A fold out camper! Incredible!

A Working Pool Table: This car won "best in show" for the day!

Viewing the cars on Friday night

Proud Abby and Alex, after winning two awards (fastest car in men's division and fastest car of the day)

Our car in the back left corner