May 25, 2009 -- posted by Karen

We certainly had an interesting time at the Ethiopian school this afternoon. Apparently a good portion of the teachers were absent due to illness because there were quite a number of classes who were entirely unsupervised. So the principal sent me off to teach a grade 6 class and Sol and Abram taught a grade five class. We had about 60 seconds to prepare a lesson and then we were in charge of classes for the next few hours. I was really impressed with the way Sol and Abram rose to the occasion. It wasn’t an easy thing to do since it is difficult to maintain control of a class when the ability to communicate is so minimal. Luckily, each class has a “head student” who helps maintain discipline. Unfortunately, they often do this by yelling or even swatting the other children with a book. We were all very tired after this rather draining experience. Since so many teachers were missing, I didn’t end up teaching my after school English class for the teachers.

Tomorrow afternoon we will head into Addis with the school bus that takes faculty and staff back and forth to Addis on a daily basis. We will be staying in a Catholic guest house for night and then head off to the airport to catch our flight that leaves at about 6:15 am. Our flight goes to three other cities before it will finally reach Lalibela. We have chosen to not take our lap top along for security reasons so we will be out of touch with all of you until our return to DZ on Sunday. We will update you on our adventure as soon as we get back!