Summer session in full swing!

Joel and me with the prep program students.

These past two weeks (the first of six in the summer session) have been a wonderful - and exhausting - whirlwind! The best parts have been: one, seeing the students every weekday for six full hours of classes and activities and, two, having a growing team helping out with the program. It was particularly fun to get to teach alongside Joel, a former student of mine. He brought great energy, creativity, and enthusiasm - and he also did a much better job than I did at persevering with his blog postings despite our busy schedule and the many power outages. Here's a link to his blog, JTrek.

Sprucing up the campus.

With the longer class days, we added daily
cleaning assignments (modeled on the Northwest School's

Dawit running the Computer Lab session.

Environment Program), and we also started pitching in with campus landscaping (in addition to helping alphabetize the HUC Library's donated fiction collection (much of which is sitting in the basement un-shelved and even still in boxes). 




Other highlights from these first two weeks of the summer included hearing from two American medical students who are spending the summer working in Addis, introducing the students here to the idea of Ultimate Frisbee as a sport (they caught on fast and are enthusiastic to start playing!), and celebrating Joel's birthday with a large group of ILAE friends - both American and Ethiopian.

By the time we said goodbye to Joel this weekend, we'd welcomed three more arrivals from Seattle, including Ellen (ILAE's Executive Director) and two more teachers from the Northwest School. Ellen will be focused on planning for the school's opening in September, and the two teachers will welcome additional students on Monday.