Graduation practise is now in full throw – with the KG pupils this morning having a full costume practise. Amazingly, it all went rather smoothly – a few costumes forgotten and the old man’s beard constantly falling on whilst he was trying to sing – but on the whole, they are ready – which is excellent – since the show isn’t until the 7th July – so there is plenty of time !
Tomorrow will be the turn of the grade classes to have their dress rehearsal, with it being anticipated that things will go well since Iris ( our Dutch volunteer ) has been working long and hard at it ! After quite a while in the country and at our school, Iris will be leaving on 24th June , so will be sorely missed. However, the great thing is that she intends to keep up her good work whilst she is back home, working with fundraising activities.
The Belgium visit last week from the music organisers who would like to work in conjunction with the school went extremely well. They have an enormous wealth of ideas to expand funding and we are currently busy working on translating all our Amharic financial information for them so that they can know more about our needs and future plans .
It does seem as if our ultimate goal of building a specially designed school from KG – grade 8 could one day become reality, rather than only a dream – firm concrete steps are now being taken to achieve this and although our steps are very much baby steps, at least they are steps, and as Paula ( ex – volunteer and fundraising expert ) always loved to quote, “ all of the little boring steps add up until one day there is a miracle “ and who knows – perhaps one day our miracle will come!
The music organisers were extremely kind to donate a digital camera to the school ( our previous one was dropped thus we had to borrow a camera to take photos for facebook etc. ) which means that we can now take as many photos as we want – amazing !
On the technological front, we had a huge disaster in that our laptop died ( it was second hand when we bought it about 4 years ago so it should not have been that much of a shock – but it was nonetheless ) – without a computer this would mean that no lesson plans could be written etc! However, we were incredibly lucky that an ex volunteer has managed to locate a laptop for us and is currently in the process of organising sending it over – amazing the kindness that people have in their heart – there aren’t really any words to describe it !
We have been amazingly lucky with donations this week, having an anonymous US $ 10 , US $ 100 from a friend of a friend as well as a Australian $ 100 dollar donation from a previous volunteers relative – which will go towards the mending of our chairs and tables, and the construction of new tables and chairs, since we anticipate needing even more due to the fact that our current grade 4 class will be replaced next year by our current grade 3 – a class of 29 ! It is a wonderful problem to have – too many students ! – may this problem continue for a great many years to come.
Ethiopian Schools for the Poor - English Alive Academy
Registered Charity Number 1140681
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