End Of The Year!

Today is the last full day I will be in Haiti and this is my last blog entry. I fly out tomorrow, Saturday, May 29th.

Our graduation went well last Sunday. It is always great to see the students who have worked so hard finally at the transition to their next stage in life. Some of them are excited and some were scared. I know it can be a little tough as many don't know if they will be going off to college or if they will be able to find jobs right away. Our graduates usually don't have too much trouble as they have received a great education and are trilingual by the time they graduate. It's great to look at all of the graduates and to know that they are so much better off because of the teaching hey have been given. Not only with their academic studies, but also with their walks with Christ. Every graduate this year had been baptized except for one. Riccardo asked Mr. Thom if he could be baptized before school was out. He knew that he was going to be leaving this Christian environment and wanted to make the decision before he parted. It was very refreshing to know that he wanted to make that choice before he left. I recorded the baptism on Mr. Thom's video recorder, so I didn't get any pictures. I do have some pictures from the graduation which are below.

Graduates


Students from High School and 8th Grade singing during the ceremony


Nephtalie Elmeus giving a speach with Marc Rocher translating in Creole


Graduates


Roger & Norma speaking with Marc Cadet translating



Roger giving a speech with last year's graduate, Madley Rocher, translating



The past two years have been incredible and I am hoping that one day I might be able to return. I don't know at the moment, but I do know that I will always be connected to Sonlight. I am certain that I will be back to visit on short term trips, but at the moment, I don't know if I will be able to return for a long term commitment again. Thank you for following my blog over the past two years, for your support, your encouraging and funny comments, as well as all of your love for this ministry. Please keep in touch.

Blessings,
Doug

05/23/10

This past week has been fairly busy. I have had some accounting to catch up on, grades are soon to be due, and other various projects have come up as we are preparing for graduation today (Sunday at 3PM). I will try to write more about the graduation later this week. We will also have another graduation this Wednesday for the Bible College.

One thing that I am excited about from this past week is a project that I have been researching a bit. As you know from many of my blogs, we have two diesel generators here which provide all of our electricity. In the course of a year, we go through quite a bit of fuel and the costs are very high. We have talked quite a bit about an alternative source, at least something that can offset our fuel costs a bit. We may not be ready to convert completely over to a different system, but we would like to reduce the costs. We are right on the coast (the school is about 30 yards or so from the ocean) so we get quite a bit of wind. I have been doing a bit of research to figure out the correct sized wind generator for us. I had contacted a few companies who have software that will generate wind averages based off of our location. Unfortunately, these aren't as accurate as we would need considering they are computer generated. So, to get accurate measurements, we have purchased an anemometer (which measures the wind speeds and direction). This will log all of our wind speeds and store it within the unit. Periodically, we can connect a laptop and download the data from it. Roger and Grant installed it on top of the school. It is about 20 feet above the roof and therefore about 50 feet off of the ground. This will allow us to get great wind averages so we can figure out if it is feasible to purchase a wind generator. It may turn out to be too costly for the benefit, but there are many days where we get great amounts of wind, so hopefully this will be a good option for us. Below is a picture I took of the anemometer on the roof. It is attached to a pole that is connected to one of our internet satellites.

05/16/10

This past week was fairly uneventful. We had a group in from Illinois and a group from Colorado. They were the last two groups to visit for the year as we only have two weeks left! Time has been going by very quickly these past few weeks. This week is the last week for the Seniors with their graduation next Sunday afternoon. They have one week less than everyone else because if they went through to the very end we wouldn't have time to have a ceremony for them. We are usually busy the last week of school as we are putting things away, tearing down our classrooms and putting everything away in storage for next year. We also spend a lot of time packing things up in our house. We have to make sure that all of our dry goods are packed well so we don't get bugs or mice in our food. We also have to cover everything up to keep the dust off as the house will sit empty for about two and a half months. On top of that, we also have to pack all of our bags for our return trip home. Having graduation on the last Friday would be a bit too much to handle and most likely wouldn't go well. We would be rushed to put it together and would have to put everything away completely in order to fly out first thing Saturday morning (we get up at 4:30AM).

After graduation this next Sunday, we will finish up our last week of classes (which only go through Thursday). Friday the 28th is a workday and then we return on Saturday! I am excited to see everyone. It doesn't seem like school lasted very long this year, however, I will say that it seems like it has been a long time since I have seen my friends and family. It will be good to be back home to see you all.

05/09/10

As I have sat down to write in my blog this year, I have noticed that I don't have quite as much to write as I did last year. I know that part of this is due to callousness. I tend to see odd things often and don't think much of them after a while. Certain things may not stick out as they did before. However, just this week I was reminded of something that is hilarious. Sometimes Haitians give their kids some crazy names. Now, I am not here to make fun of names that are unfamiliar to me, names that I haven't heard of before, or anything like that. Yes, I think it is strange when someone has twins and they name them Mike and Michael. I don't quite get it. I asked someone once why they do that. I'm thinking, "They're twins so people are already going to get their names mixed up." The answer I got was, "They're twins!" as in, "Why wouldn't you?". So, that is a bit strange to me, but that isn't what I want to write about either. The thing that I was reminded of today is that some kids here have the names of famous people. That's right. This week, Brad Pitt enrolled as a preschooler. I'm not talking about first name "Brad", last name "Pitt". I'm talking about a student with the first name of "Brad Pitt". Yes, both words are his first name. I don't know how I forgot to write about this before because we have a Beyonce and Jay-Z in our school already. Why not Brad Pitt? I heard that Maria Carey lives in our neighborhood, but doesn't go to our school. This is the daughter of one of our aides at Sonlight from what I heard. Maybe she will go to our school in a few years. I assume she is too young, but as I said, I am not quite sure who this is. I think those are the only "celebrities" we have in our school, but I'll be sure to let you know if there are any others that I missed. Sorry that I haven't mentioned this before as it is quite commical. Oh, and sorry to say, you cannot sponsor Brad Pitt if you were thinking about it. One of the teachers here has already put the request in. I wish I had thought about that sooner! Come to think of it, I think Brad Pitt should sponsor Brad Pitt.

05/02/10

The weather this past week has changed significantly. We've finally hit the point where the weather from here on out is going to be as hot as blazes! I know it's hot when my students are praying for rain to cool it down. These are the same students who wear down jackets when it's 75 degrees! The trouble isn't the heat itself, but more the humidity and lack of wind. Fortunately, both generators are working so we are able to run our air-conditioners! We don't have them in school, but fortunately for me, my room doesn't get the hottest. I have a big almond tree growing outside of my window so it blocks the morning sun for the most part.

Other than it being hot, school has been going well. I am tutoring a few more students so that has been fun. It's always helpful to work with students one-on-one, especially when you can tell that they want to learn and you can see their gains. Some students are asking only because it's the end of the year. The problem with this is that I have to reinforce to them that this extra push toward the end needs to continue next year. For example, if a student isn't doing too well and they try really hard at the end and do well (where the material is the most difficult) it's proof that they have the knowledge to go on to the next year. However, if a student only makes that push toward the end of the year, but doesn't continue to work as hard the next year, then they are most likely going to struggle early on.

Other than having a few new students for tutoring, school has been going on about the same as normal. I am amazed that we only have four more weeks left. Not quite four full weeks as graduation will be during the last week of May! It's an exciting time of the year, but also sad to see the Seniors go because you always have to realize that there are some that you most likely won't see again. I didn't teach the seniors this year, but had them as juniors last year. There are a lot of fun students in that class. It's strange to think that my second year here is coming to an end so soon. I am anxious to get home to see everyone, but knowing that we only have four more weeks makes me want to take it all in while I am still here. It's a great place to be.

Cherries and Bridges

Cherries!
On Friday, I showed up for school and Cedric, a fourth grader that I sponsor, came running up to me and said that he had something for me. He set his book bag down and rifled through it. A second later, he pulled out a quart size bag of cherries! I didn't know Haiti had cherries. They were a little different than normal cherries. They are the same size, but have a slightly different shape. They're not perfectly round. More like an apple in shape, but small as a normal cherry. Also, they don't have seeds like a bing cherry. These have three seeds in the middle that are a little strange looking. They taste like regular cherries...the tart ones. I don't remember what they are called, but we had those on my dad's farm. I remember quite well. That's the tree I was in when my brother shot me with a bb gun right in the butt. Well, he hit my thigh, but it was pretty close to my butt. I have attached a picture of the bag of cherries. All of my students told me to make juice out of them, so I smashed them down and squeezed the juice into a cup. I didn't get quite a cup, but it was very good. I also ate the smashed up cherries. I was wishing that my brother was here because we both love cherries. We used to go to our grandma's basement and pull out a Cool Whip container full of frozen tart cherries. We wouldn't stop eating them until the container was empty and our fingers were red and frozen.



A New Bridge!
Other than this, we did have a bit of a wreck outside of our house. There is an alley that goes along the front of our house. I wouldn't call it a road because it isn't quite wide enough for most cars. People do try though. Everyone tries! We know, because the street narrows just outside of our house and those not big enough fall into the "stream" that runs along our house. This "stream" is nothing of a real stream. it's basically waste water. Any water from washing clothes, showers, or dishes goes into that stream. We have a septic tank, however, our washing machine goes into this stream and contributes to the flow. As I mentioned, it runs along our house...along our outer wall. So, to get to the street, we open our gate and walk over a mini concrete bridge. The problem is that whenever someone falls into the creek, they destroy our bridge. We first had a step. This was here for years. You would simply step over the small stream and onto the step directly in front of the gate. It was simple...until a large water truck came down the street and slid into the stream. It smashed up against our wall and my roommate, who was home at the time, couldn't get out of the gate, so someone brought a ladder to him so he could climb over the concrete wall. Earlier this school year, in October, a group from my church came to visit. They had poured a rectangle slab and reinforced it with rebar. They didn't have time to finish installing it though. So, we had a slab inside our gate, but we needed a good foundation to put it on. After a few months, Ermilien, a friend, and I picked it up and set it over the creek. It wasn't the best, but worked fine.



I was concerned that if a truck drove over it, it might break up as it was not concreted to a good foundation. Well, a few weeks ago, I heard a bunch of racket outside around 10PM. Sure enough, a Nissan truck fell into the stream and was up against our wall. They had crushed our bridge. We were now back to stepping over the creek.



I had woken up Saturday morning and was drinking some coffee when I heard the door. Roger was outside and needed to plug in an extension chord. He was here to construct a new bridge. I was happy to see him because I knew he would do it right. He needed power because he was going to drill four holes into the foundation right against the gate. He was working with Ermilien. Ermilien had dug down about three feet into the ground on the other side of the stream where they were going to pour a deep slab of concrete. This was also reinforced with rebar. He had forms for the concrete precut and was ready to go. I went out to help a little and after about three hours it was finished! Below is our new bridge. I am not going to say it's indestructible, but it should be able to handle the weight of any truck. Where the slab meets the alley, it goes down about three feet into the ground. I think we should be ok!

04/18/10

This week has been fairly uneventful. School has been going quickly, but it always does and especially the last quarter. I gave a test in my 6th grade math class this week. There was a small section that had different geometric shapes. There was a trapezoid, parallelogram, ray, line segment, intersecting lines, and pentagon. The students had to write next to the shape what their name is. As the students finish they raise their hands and I walk around to collect the tests. When I took Dorothy's test, I looked at her answers. Next to the intersecting lines she wrote "x-rays". It seems so silly but to a student who hears English as their second language, it makes sense that she would easily get this mixed up. Of course, she has probably heard of x-rays, but most likely only a few times. Maybe as a vocabulary word, but never again. We also had just learned what a ray is in the geometry section, so as the intersecting lines appear to form an "x" it is quite reasonable for her to think that they are "x-rays". It's funny sometimes how words get mixed up. Last year, I had a student write, "photograph" for the name of a pictograph. I corrected him, but I didn't count off for it. I got to thinking about Creole and how hard it is to learn new words sometimes. I first learned "kanpe" which means "to stand". Later, I learned "koute" which means "to listen". They only start with the same letter and end with the same letter, but I used to get them mixed up. For a Haitian, it would be nearly impossible to mix those up as they have learned them in action rather than in a classroom. So, the same holds true for intersecting lines, rays and.... x-rays.