Dec 9, 2006: red season snakes; helping choirs, dances & videos

Hey All,

It seems there is a chill in the air, the leaves are gone and we are faced with another cold and dreary winter. The bite of frosty weather and warm cider fill up the lazy days. Everywhere except here. It's in the 80's and humid and getting hotter everyday. We have had 1 tiny rainshower in the past 4 weeks. They call it "red" season because the soil here is mostly volcanic rock and clay. Dust blows up from the cars and coats everything near the road a rust color. They have to spray down the road next to the classrooms every morning to keep it under control. It also seems to be bug and snake season. They seem to be in full force lately. A bunch of snakes have been relieved of duty around school these past weeks. There is a biologist guy who works for SIL that collects them and does something with them. Apparently, he has a fairly wide variety.

The girls had their 2nd game today. We came back from 10 down and lost it with 3 seconds left when they hit 2 freethrows to win. Bummer. They played hard and had fun. We do a short devotion as a team before the games and close after the game at center court. Our girls invite the other teams to join us and the school today was not a Christian school and the whole team came over except the coach. It was really special to have these girls join us considering it is an American school that has very few Americans. At least this time I got to close myself. Last time, the other team only spoke French so I had to make a last minute change in plans and have one of my girls close. There is so much more respect and courtesy in the girls league than the boys. I really enjoy it and it is much less stressful for everybody.

Tonight is the big formal Christmas dance/dinner. Betsy and I have been helping set up all day. We weren't asked but we knew they didn't have enough help so I brought in 50 tables and 200 chairs from all the classrooms down to the courts and Betsy spent her afternoon cooking and cutting fruit. It went well but I feel sorry for the partents who will be waiting to pick up their kids from cleanup at midnight. Its still going now but we are going to bail out soon.

There is a choir thing north of town tomorrow that Betsy is doing something related to American Sign language for. She may have been asked to be an interpretor. I will not be attending the concert but I will be sadly missing out and shedding a tear all through my weekly street hockey game with the Cannucks. The sacrifices I make............

There has been a videographer here this week making a teacher recruiting video for the school. He asked me when was a good time to get some diverse students to do a little intro for him so I brought down my World Geog class. 2 Germans, 1 Colombian, 3 Cameroonians, 1 Irish, 1 English, 1 Australian/American 2 Americans and 1 Texan ( you know how they are ). They did very well.

That's about it from here. French classes are going well. We can conjugate verbs now.

God Bless and stay warm.
Brian (& Betsy)