Monday. Day one at AFE

We got to the school early enough to unload the van of the medical supplies we brought to Hollie for the clinic, and got a brief tour by Adam of the updates to the existing structures and the plans for the new building under construction.  The newest building will be three stories, as is the current high school building, but because of the elevation, it will be a full floor higher.  The lower floor will have a library, a study hall, and a medical clinic.  The second floor will be the Elementary school, getting all the elementary grades (1-6) in one building, and the third floor will be an open social area.  It will have half walls and a roof, but the upper wall area will be left open.  The plan is to have cafe tables and chair, and maybe a small snack bar located there.

The first building constructed on the campus currently has the 1-4 classrooms downstairs, and the mission team room, the music class room, and a small souvenier store where the students sell items. Once the 1-4 grades move to the new building, the plan is to start some vocational/trade type classes in the rooms they vacated.

The group of five showers that were built between building #1 and the kitchen/cafeteria/assembly area are being remodled this week.  We are converting three of the showers into toilet stalls.  This entails chiseling out the concrete and brick to free up the pipes which were of sufficient size for shower drainage, but too small for toilet waste, to be removed and larger pipe to be put in.

The Alphabet Wall that was painted in the nursery room four years ago, was demolished earlier this year when they took out the wall to double the size of the nursery since there are now so many toddlers that spend the day at AFE.  Pastor Jeony asked that the walls be repainted pictures since everyone misses the ones that were destroyed.

Finally, the exterior of the buildings are being repainted.  The sixth graders had been doing some of the painting to fulfill their National education requirement of community service.  They tried, but it needs to be finished and touched up a bit where they started.

So, those are the work projects we will be assisting with as time allows.  The first half of each day is designated to interacting and doing activities with the children (one classroom at a time).  This morning, yearbook photos were taken of each teacher and child.  In addition to being in an actual yearbook, the children get a copy of the photo to put into tongue-depresser photo frames they made during activity time.




The 3rd grade class lining up for their yearbook photos.



We also played rousing games of soccer and frisbee out on the 'campo', the dirt/gravel soccer field adjacent to the school.  It is absolutely amazing the amount of energy the kids have since they are fed twice a day at the school and aren't as hungry as they were before starting school. It's not so amazing that I am a klutz and did a spectacular wipe out while attempting to catch an errant disc thrown by a 1st grader.  Blood resulted from a couple of places.  No more sports play for me as my knee is scraped raw.



Photo take after it was cleaned up. 

After we left the school for the day, we headed back to 'base' to clean up and then go to the hardware store to pick up the supplies we will need for the work projects.  Unfortunately, we arrived at the store just as it was closing, (for the second day in a row, we tried Sunday, too), so we went back to the hotel and walked to the restaurant at which we had planned to eat dinner.  It, too, had just closed.  So we went out for Chinese.

Rule number one of these trips is BE FLEXIBLE.  We get a lot of practice following that one!!!