I have begun to feel something strange that I NEVER thought would happen...I've gotten to where I don't like Fridays.  Fridays mean that the next two days will be spent away from my students, away from the other teachers.  It's a good think that church is so amazing or I might actually dislike the weekends.  My students talk so much during class that I had come to think that they didn't really like me much.  But then we were gone to Adjumani for five days.  We returned late on a Monday night, and on Tuesday morning I walked in to the school compound via the gate that opens in front of the Senior Two classroom.  First one girl from Senior Two saw me and she raised her hands above her head and began to clap, so then the others noticed me.  They all began to clap and cheer, shouting and standing to their feet.  They were so loud that I couldn't hear much of what they were saying except varied "Teacher Donna!"  "We have missed you!"  I was so happy that I couldn't do anything but wave and smile.  In Senior One I got the same reaction, accompanied by shouts of, "Please don't leave us again!"  and the teachers scolded me, "We thought you went back to America and did not say goodbye!  We were upset!"  Since then the students have done a much better job of listening in class, volunteering to write their answers on the blackboard, and having me check their work after class.  Whoever thought teaching could be so fun!

Since so many of my students strugle greatly with English, I've been trying to think of the tactics that my teachers in Costa Rica used to help us learn Spanish.  One of them was writing assignments in Spanish.  Also, since I love writing so much, I decided this will be a great way for the students to practice their English.  So now for the past few weeks an hour and a half of Senior One and an hour and a half of Senior Two is dedicated to writing a story in English.  Sometimes I let them do free writing and sometimes I assign them a topic.  They are very creative!  This week I explained to them that there are many different kinds of writing and that they all have a purpose and a place, but that the best writing, the most inspiring writing, is usually writing that is true.  Writing that has come straight from a writer's personal life is usually the kind of writing that sticks with the reader forever.  So then I told them that their assignment was to write for me something that has happened in their own life.  I told them, "I want you to tell me about an event that changed the way you think, or changed the way you understand God, or helped to make you into who you are today.  Something that you will remember forever."  At the end of class they all filed by and handed me their papers and that evening I sat down to read them.   I couldn't believe some of the things these students wrote about.  AIDS, witchcraft, death, abuse by a father's second or third wife, being raised by grandparents because the parents no longer want the children, fleeing the war in Rwanda in the middle of the night.  How different they are from the things that fill my own journals.  One of the toughest things I've had to do in Africa yet was to walk into class the next day and look those children in the face, knowing that the reason that they strive so hard for my attention is because no one has ever really loved them.