Early Arrival ?, Slow to Email ?

It has been a week already and I haven’t posted anything. That is mainly because the internet seldom works and when it does it doesn’t work long enough to upload anything. The other reason is, I am not a writer. The latest email I have received is 2 days old so I am typing this in hopes that things with internet will improve. Very difficult for Karen to do her work with the Canadian board members and others with no internet.

I surprised everyone last Tuesday by arriving earlier in the day than expected so Karen had all the kids trying to hide and surprise me. Though it didn’t work as expected it was still a pleasant surprise to have them all run out together to greet me.

Yay, Jim is here

Happy to have Jim back

The time with Karen flew by, we had great visits every day between the usual interuptions. I don’t know that I accomplished a lot during this time but it was very enjoyable. We even managed to sneak off the compound one morning for a leisurely stroll down the canal. Then Saturday morning we took the older children and did a walk down the river, a route I had not taken before. We were welcomed by beautiful scenes and an old friend I hadn’t seen in a few years. We also watched a horse trying to cross the river, as it aimed for a good landing spot on the other side but the current would carry it down to an area it couldn’t get out so it would come back across until it could walk upstream and try again. We saw, I believe, three attempts but it would never start far enough upstream to compensate for the current. We left hoping it would figure things out before losing all it’s strength and perishing in the river. There was already one horse on the riverbank that had lost. There are many people as stubborn and unwilling to change as that horse, I hope I am not one of them.

Along the river

Saturday walk

Frustrated horse trying to cross the canal

One of the jobs Karen assigned me was to be Ti Luc’s teacher, Ti Luc looks forward every day to my classes ?. I confirmed what I’ve always suspected, I am not a teacher and have great respect for those who are.

Come on Ti Luc. You must go to your classroom.

I have done a few of the usual odd job repairs and worked at cleaning up the computers used for student training. The computers have been a challenge with the spotty internet.

For those of you enjoying winter ❄️, I haven’t missed it a bit. The weather here has been close to perfect, the low 30’s during the day ☀️ and high teens at night, though it seems the locals find it a bit chilly in the mornings. For my American friends the conversion is 9/5+32. ?

The challenge of communicating with non English speaking staff has been eased with the children who understand absolutely no English when you try to get them to do something suddenly understand it all when you are trying to get something across to one of the staff or a student who doesn’t have the exposure to English that our kids have. I have heard of selective hearing but this takes it to a new level.

Looking forward to one more week of spending time with the kids and staff with hopefully a couple of early morning walks thrown in.