First Full Week & Retreat

Our first visit to Holy Cross Lake View (HCLV) was on Friday to get a more extensive tour than what we had received on Thursday. We also met up with the academic advisor to express our interests regarding which subjects we would be interested in assisting with. There was a decent amount of downtime, and we had little guidance in terms of figuring out what to do. We filled our time with lunch and sitting in on a variety of classes. I also got the impression some teachers thought we were also teachers or at least in school to become teachers (though none of us are), so we just hope they can meet us where we are at. 

We found out on Monday or Tuesday that we would be teaching English to senior ones and senior twos (the equivalent of 7th and 8th graders). The class sizes are around 60, which makes it hard enough to get to know everyone’s names. Pretty much all of the younger students (especially those not in senior 5 or 6) had nearly shaved heads, making it sometimes difficult to tell girls from guys. Some were also soft-spoken, making it difficult to hear their names. We also found out that the teacher for our English classes resigned, so that meant we were teaching middle schoolers on our own with no lesson plans and only a workbook we hadn’t read to work with. Our classes went smoothly enough, though. The students here seem a bit less chaotic than in the US, though they sometimes laugh when we say certain things like "tomato." Well, toe-may-toe, toe-mah-toe. I suppose it is just a cultural reference I don’t understand. Some probably had rarely or never seen hair like mine and ended up braiding it. I didn’t mind, though!

There were also some more visitors from the US with us, about ten or fifteen of them. They were from a Holy Cross high school in California and were all headed into their senior year. Some teachers and counselors accompanied them. It was nice to talk to them, though they were frequently going places as they were only in Jinja for a few days and had a designated bus driver to take them places. 

After having gone to daily Mass in the mornings back at the house, we kept our streak of going to Mass as we went into retreat. The first speaker on Friday (which was a holiday so classes were canceled) was Brother Adolf. He talked about the Holy Cross mission, and he was a really nice guy that reminded me a bit of Kenan Thompson. There was lots of dancing, which is definitely not my strong suit (especially when I had to do it in front of the whole school), but I sometimes did manage to have some fun with it. Each day was filled with Mass, adoration, and talks from a guest priest. 

On Sunday, many people were baptized, and the Mass ended up lasting about three hours. A Eucharistic procession around campus followed, which lasted another two hours. I BAKED in the sun on the field despite always wearing sunscreen, but it was such a great way to celebrate Corpus Christi. Retreat was quite a whirlwind of events, but it gave me the opportunity to get to know more of the students there, which I consider a win!