In Diani + other updates

Hey everyone,

We are offically (almost) done with our elementary internship. We have a few more bits to wrap up, but after that, we're finished! Everyone except for Julie returns home to do their special education internship requirements. We are all very excited to be finished, to be vacationing at the beach, and to finally come home.

Here's how the last three or so weeks panned out for us:

We taught for two more solid weeks at Jora (Mad, Amy, Chanda) and Rukanga (Julie, Molly, Jesse) primary schools, working with classes 1-8. On Thursdays and Fridays, still at Bungule, all 6 of us. The last week was a bit off-schedule due to the schools moving their testing up a week. In the schools at the end of each term, all the students take the national exams in each subject they study. These exams take about three days and the students are basically drained afterwards. Even classes 1-3 take the exams, IN English! They have some translation help from their teachers, but other than that, they complete the exams. We finished the last few weeks teaching the groups we could meet with and doing inservices for the teachers. For the inservice, we presented all the strategies and ideas we've used while working with their students. We left them with posters and materials to hopefully help their students make some progress in the terms to come. All the schools were very happy to (after the exams) let us take a peek at the mark lists (grade sheets) to compare term scores and look for improvements. We all miss the kids so much--they kept us smiling every day.

The schools moved the exams up one week to compensate for the Referendum. Kenya just voted in an updated constitution that includes a bill of rights. 'Just' meaning on Wednesday! They tallied the votes and it passed--68ish% I believe voted yes. In the Kasigau community, we have witnessed many 'Yes' rallies, people wearing green shirts and holding large informational meetings. We have received Travel Alerts from pretty much everyone warning of the political aftermath of the referendum (like bombings in public places and other violent outbursts) so we are on the watch! Its pretty safe here in Diani because it's such a touristy place. They just closed shops, and that was about it.

We spent the last few days at the banda having fun, packing, and hanging out with some wazungu friends (aka other white people). We've had such a fabulous experience here and we've learned so much! We can't wait to come home and tell you all about it.

We leave on Wednesday morning from Nairobi and arrive on Wednesday night in Vancouver. We fly out and arrive on the same day, even though we'll be flying for 18-something hours. Ugh!

Please send us messages on the blog. We love hearing from all of you!! We're enjoying these last few days, but definitely ready to come home, so see you soon!

The Kenya 6

ps- even though Amy isn't right next to me (Madeline), I'm sure she'd want to say thank you to everyone for the birthday wishes. We all had a great time on the safari--saw 7 lions, too many elephants to count, zebras, giraffes, baboons, buffalo, so many birds and many other creatures. We had a great (really expensive) lunch and got to watch two lions come to a watering hole, and had a great dinner at the banda! A very amazing day!

Thanks for reading--look forward to (hopefully) one more post!