and they're off!

Early this morning all of the high school kids left for Outdoor Education. They will be gone for 12 days. They do this once a year and get credit for their Anthropology class. Every time they go to a different spot. This year they went to a village called Ebele to work. They also will set up a clinic to assist with medical needs, they will do a lot of building, and fix-it projects that need to be done, they will have some AIDS conferences to educate them on what AIDS is and how it is spread, they will be showing the Jesus film in the village’s language 4 times, along with running a bunch of kids camps for the youngsters. So they will be busy. They were so excited about this though. Two years ago most of Sentani was flooded so the kids stayed here and helped to rebuild stores and houses. They brought food and clean water to families, played with the kids and assisted any way they could. Ebele is colder than Sentani and the kids were told to bring sweatshirts and knit hats. Imagine?!? There are places though that are quite cold, especially up in the highlands, even places in Indo that actually get snow.
It will be quieter here for us as we only have 2 eighth graders left in the hostel. We went out tonight to watch the eclipse but we were not able to see it. It was too cloudy. Did you see it?
Cale is all excited because his fingernail fell off today. Wyatt accidentally closed the door on it and now the old nail is gone. He thinks it is really cool and shows it off to everyone even though it is his middle finger…We are taking Sophie in to (hopefully) get her eye checked tomorrow. There is some sort of infection in it that has lasted a week and not gotten any better. The hospital that Garth had his appendix out at has an eye clinic but you can’t make appointments and they do not answer their phone. So we are going to just go and hopefully we will get in. I am sure it will be nothing like the awesome eye clinic my sister works at.
Well, I am going to bed early tonight. There were loud celebrations all through the night in honor of the Chinese New Year and the drums and chanting would not stop. So, “The sun has gone to bed and so must I … So long, farewell, I need to say good-bye…Good-bye…”
(Sound of Music)
Love you all
Rachel