Building Relationships

          Hello everyone! It has been over a month since my last blog post so I thought I would sit down and finally give you all an update on how life is going here in South Sudan. For the most part things haven’t really changed since my last post as far as my schedule goes.  However, things have definitely been interesting! I am finally settling in to life here and the once very foreign land of South Sudan is beginning to feel a lot like home. I am settling into my role as an English teacher as well and am building strong relationships with my students, which has been a great blessing. In the past I have been on short-term missions to Mexico, Ecuador, and France and they were great but after only two and a half months of being in South Sudan I can see how different they were from this experience. On short-term missions you get to go spend some time with people of another culture for a week or so and it’s a beautiful thing but you don’t really have enough time to build relationships. I have been blessed with the chance to become friends with many of my students and other people in the community and it has been a great joy.

          In other school news, two weeks ago Brother Chisomo (one of the Salesian brothers who lives here and works at the secondary school as well) and I went into Juba to represent Don Bosco Senior Secondary School at a South Sudan Ministry of Education meeting. It was a great experience to see how passionate the government is about improving education here and the Ministry gave us some great ideas for ways to continue moving forward with our own school. Some of the projects we will be working on include making a budget for the school and implementing the new Ministry of Education online student database called “Anna Fi Inni” which is Arabic for “I am here”. The program’s main use is for monitoring attendance across South Sudan’s schools and they also started a program to help promote women’s education, which is great. It has definitely been exciting to witness a brand new country’s initial development firsthand and I look forward to continuing my work at the secondary school. The academic year ends in about a month so we are busy with finishing up with the term and soon we will begin preparation for final exams which I can’t believe is already right around the corner.

          It is definitely going to be a bizarre experience celebrating the winter months here considering it is going to be the opposite of winter in America weather-wise here pretty soon. From what I have heard from everyone around here the rainy season does not usually last this long so the dry season should be upon us very soon. The dry season can take its time getting here for all I care though. I am enjoying having a few extra weeks of nice weather! Anyways that is about all I can think of at the moment but I will try to be more frequent with these posts in the future. Enjoy the last week of the Year of Faith and God Bless!