M.S. Awards Ceremony

BFA is such a transient community. It's an unavoidable trait considering our purpose and the identity of our students. Missionaries move, military families are reassigned, business families transfer, not to mention seniors graduate. Every year, the good-byes are emotion-filled and many, and I'd like to say it gets easier, but so far Year 2 has proven much more difficult than Year 1.

I tell you this, however, to go a step further and say how impressed I have been with the effort BFA puts into saying good-bye well. Over the past few weeks, I've seen several instances of encouragement and gathering of people who know fully well, this is the "last" whatever, and they intentionally soak it in. Last night, in particular, the Middle School hosted its annual 8th grade Banquet followed by the Middle School Awards Ceremony. It's a time for all to recognize some of the achievements of the past year (academics, music, spiritual growth, ...) and to offer the 8th graders some transition into high school.

Here are some pictures from the dinner:

At the Ceremony itself, the most unique and special part of the evening is the reading of the 8th grade tributes. Several teachers write personalized tributes for 2-3 students they think they know the best and then read them aloud for all their parents and peers. It's powerful, especially when older siblings and even BFA alumni come up and tell you afterwards how they still have their tribute and read it from time to time.

I was thrilled with the three students I got to write for and admit I shed more than one tear in writing (and reading) them. Here's a video of one of them:

As much as I hate it, I do have to come to terms with the fact that our school year is over (although I am ready for a break from lesson planning and grading). Some of my students are leaving for good. Some will be gone for a year or two, and of course some will be back in the fall. I've learned a lot from all of them, and I praise God and thank you for allowing me to be a part of their lives.

More funny lines

Student running for next year's class president:

"Elections are like wedgies. One good pick, and you're set for a comfortable ride!"

Lines of the Day

#1, from the mouth of a 13-year-old:

"I'd like to be president because, well, I've never been president before."

#2:

"After the Middle Ages, many changes occurred because of the Renaissance starting to unwrap."

Lugano: Thursday and Friday

Thursday was more of a work day for the kids. In the morning, they did a mapping activity from their hike, and while they did that, I graded all their castle sketches. Some were really impressive. Then in the afternoon, they had to spend a good hour working on English, which was to write a creative short story set in the 1400's in or around the Bellinzona castles. I was in charge of grading those, too, and it was actually really fun to read their ideas and see the castles through their eyes.

Finally, they arrived at their play time, and they even managed to get our Principal (top left corner) wet. She was a good sport!
Friday was for cleaning up and driving home, though we did have one FUN stop: a chocolate factory. The all-you-can-eat sample bar was amazing, but the site in this photo was actually quite hard to watch, almost physically painful. They took chocolate bars off the assembly line that didn't make the cut and ... and ... tossed them!!!

I didn't realize SJ snuck into this picture to "milk" the cow till later.

The day was supposed to end with lunch by the lake, at which point we took this group photo. Then we piled into the vans and began the trek northward. Unfortunately, we didn't get very far because one of the vans broke down. (I have no pictures, sadly.) We ended up waiting nearly 4 hours for Roadside assistance, used up all 30 Euros worth of minutes on my phone, and they still hadn't found us. Finally, we left behind one of our leaders and 2 students, squeezed everybody else into the vans that were left, and continued on to BFA. Parents were pretty excited we brought their kids back, even though it was nearly 11 pm by the time we did. And I have to say: I was pretty impressed with the students and their lack of complaining through the whole ordeal as we sat there in the heat just waiting. What a great group of kids!

Organizing parent calling chains

More Minute to Win It

Lugano: Wednesday

(Read to the end for a moving story.)

Tuesday was our Science/PE day. We took the Funicolare up the peninsula in the middle of Lake Lugano to the top of Mount San Salvatore. Check out the view that our 8th grade boys managed to spruce up. Awww.
The hike down was actually quite the killer, which I never thought I'd say of a DOWNhill hike, but 1,500 steps will do that to me. My job was to catch all the stragglers at the back and keep them moving. For the second half of the day, it was these two lovely girls. We had such great conversations, and I'm really grateful for our time together. Check out our view along the way as well.
Everyone was especially thankful to reach the bottom and the lake. The ferry ride back to the parking lot was invigorating. Rachel played captain the whole way. (Okay, not really, just for a few seconds.)
Once back at the Youth Centro, nobody wasted any time getting into swimming suits and jumping into the lake to cool off. After that it was back to devos and games of Minute to Win It. I'll try to add a video as well.
The one downside to this day was that I scratched up the van I was driving. Ahhhh, I know! It was just a block from the Youth Centro, and I was immediately upset. (Even yelled at the kids for squealing and had to apologize for it later.) As I walked back to the corner to check out the damage to the wall, SJ (in the last picture) offered to walk with me. Sensing my depressed mood, he reached out to pat my arm.

"It's okay, Miss Custer. You don't need to be sad. Remember, you're worth more than a van."

"Are you getting back at me for saying this to you all year long? That you're worth more than your grades?"

"Uh-huh. Is it working?"

Made everything all better again.

Lugano: Tuesday

Tuesday morning, we met at school at 8:30 and loaded 25 students and 5 chaperones into 4 school vans for our 4-hour trip to Lugano. Along the way, we stopped at the Bellinzona castles: three medieval fortifications that are in surprisingly good shape. It was SO MUCH FUN researching them and teaching about them to the kids. It'll just never be the same to teach in a regular classroom again!

Walking the battlements with Rachel

Rachel also found the 600-year-old latrines.

The students' assignment was to sketch 8 castle parts,

combining history and art into one lesson.

We arrived at the Centro Evangelico Magliosa outside of Lugano around 5 pm, giving the kids enough time to explore the grounds and get settled in before supper and our evening program. On Tuesday, the devotions were about "encouragment," and the students engaged in a cool activity in which they wrote each other notes. I love the look on JB's face as he reads his sheet. The rest of the evening was for fun and games - various versions of Minute to Win It. That's what the video in the last post was about, too.

Foosball was a big hit, and the best player of all was the Principal, Ms. Steele!

How many cards could you knock down with an unlimited supply of rubber bands?

Lugano preview

Just to give you a little taste of the fun stories to come of our time in Lugano, Switzerland.

Rest of My Africa Thoughts

burned-out bus

I’m sorry this is such a long entry, but I wanted to finish my Africa update and let you in on my continual processing development, just in case you’re interested. The time in the Bush really was eye-opening and life-changing. Besides getting a goat and experiencing a gratefulness beyond anything I’d known, God taught me things about myself and my expectations of other believers, and I know I grew through it all.

What was a bit more unexpected were the days that followed the Bush experience. We left on Thursday and arrived back in Ouagadougou without any major delays. Our driver even took us on a round-about tour past government buildings and the president’s house. The students went off to youth group that night with the African MK’s, and we all went to bed pretty early, exhausted as we were. It was a great night in which the air conditioning never went off, and after three nights under constant mosquito attack, our guesthouse felt like the Hilton. Until we found out on Friday morning that the night had actually been rather eventful.

There had been an attempted coup on the president’s life, and he’d been whisked away to his home outside the city, leaving an upset military who took their weapons’ storage out into the streets to protest, loot, and damage. When vendors arrived at their businesses Friday morning and saw the mess, they took the streets to voice their complaint as well, and things escalated from there. The President returned by Friday afternoon, promptly dissolved government, which in turn brought about more demonstrations. I can now say that I have heard live gunfire in my life, just a block away from the guesthouse. It was pretty new and awfully scary for this European MK (I’m such a wimp compared to African MK’s). All our planned activities for our Fun Friday were, of course, cancelled, and we spent the day watching old movies, taking naps, getting our hair braided, and playing games when the electricity went out. And truth be told, we passed the night in relative calm. By Saturday, the kids were antsy to get going, and I myself was counting down the hours till we’d board out plane at 7 pm.

There were still protests going on downtown – right around all those buildings we’d seen Thursday on our drive – so the president issued a curfew for the dark hours, basically 6:30 pm – 6:30 am. And that’s when things got thrown upside down. AirFrance, realizing they wouldn’t be able to take off after 6:30 pm, decided to not even fly into Ouagadougou on Saturday. So: no plane. Fortunately/Unfortunately, we hadn’t left the guesthouse yet, so it did save us a trip to the airport, but it meant that we were stuck inside for yet another 24-hour period. It wasn’t so much feeling like the Hilton anymore, more like prison. The kids, as you can imagine, were upset and could only think about calling their families, but as a whole, they managed this new obstacle really well. I was so impressed. We had an impromptu praise session and then watched more movies, took more naps, and played more games.

We did finally leave Africa Sunday by 1 pm, though we missed every single connecting flight in Paris. 4 stressful hours of rebooking 11 people on various flights later, we were at our AirFrance hotel by 12:30 am, only to have to get up and be back at the airport around 6:00 am Monday morning. We got back to Kandern 27 hours later, and all I can say is that I take no responsibility for any of the things I said that day because at that point I was so loopy!

At no point, however, did I feel unsafe, even when there was gunfire a block away, and at no point did I ever doubt God’s goodness or his sovereignty over this African nation. But I definitely doubted myself and my ability to handle new challenges completely out of my normal realm of thinking. Which did make me wonder: how many of the risks I take in daily living are truly “risks” for God’s glory, or are they more a show of reliance on myself? “Come everybody and see how good I look doing … you name it” when I already trust myself to handle it well. Teaching someone to drive a stick shift. Inviting a class over for a movie night. Baking cookies for the church luncheon. Africa was a big and true “risk” for me. I’d never intended to sign up for this trip and only went because I was asked to and heard God’s confirmation. If nothing else, he wanted to increase my dependence on him. Of course, that does put me in the precarious situation of wondering what other comforts God will remove from my life in order to increase my dependence on him. J

So this is Africa!

Here is the video from the report our team gave in church. Enjoy!

Nepotism

I have another great story from today. In World History in 8th grade, we're just starting to shift into the Reformation. Today's lesson was about highlighting the major problems that were tainting the Church, some of the basic reasons people were wanting to reform it. What I had the students do was act out a problem based on a description I gave them (e.g. selling forgiveness for sins, trying to buy a church position, etc), and the rest of the class had to guess what the name of this particular problem was (e.g. indulgences, simony, etc). I had a list of 5-6 problems.

One that hadn't ever appeared in the book and I figured would be brand new was nepotism, the idea of showing favoritism to a family member or friend. The group acted it out perfectly, and with a smirk, I asked if anyone had any idea what the name for this problem was. But the joke was on me when one student haltingly tried muttering "Nepo- something. Nepotism?"

Picking my jaw up off the floor, I asked, "JB, how did you know that?"

"The Office."

"Come again?"

BD chimed in. "Oh yeah, they did have an episode on Nepotism."

Who knew? The Office is educational!

Days of Laughter

Laughter really is the best medicine, and though I wasn't "sick" per say, I still thank God for the day of laughter he gave me.

1. In History class today, in a slide show of various Renaissance painters and authors, I tried to include a funny picture of a giant from Rebelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel. What I didn't notice until 10 students pointed it out at the same time, was the human figure poised on the tip of the giant's fork just as he was lifting it to his mouth. Gross. And oops. I quickly moved on to the next slide.

2. In German class, a student winked at me. I can't even type it without laughing and blushing. I sit here 6 hours later, and I can't for the life of me remember what the wink was for. All I remember was wildly looking around to see if any other students had noticed. (Sidenote: coming from this particular kid, I know it had no meaning. Most likely he had something stuck in his eye.)

3. I won a door prize tonight at the Staff Appreciation Dinner to go bowling and take 5 friends. Hooray! It was one of the more unusual prizes as nobody even knew there was a bowling alley nearby. The fun part was having people come running up afterwards suggesting combinations of friends I could take. Am I blessed, or what.

Just sayin'

Anytime, as often as you like, if you come visit me, I will take you to Kandern's Eiscafe! Yummm!