Hello all! I'm sorry it's been a bit since I've updated. The truth is, nothing is really set in stone yet, so I can't tell you what we'll be doing exactly. We had our second group meeting tonight. Every other Sunday we get together at our leader's house (a professor from my school) to talk about the trip, our fears, our expectations, etc. My group consists of 7 girls, 1 boy (don't worry, he's dating one of the girls), a professor and his wife, and a lady who is actually a chair for Ethiopia Reads (she lives in Orange City, so she meets with us too).
Tonight we discussed an EXTREMELY loose itinerary. We aren't for sure what we are going to do yet, because they want to tailor the trip to our group's strengths and hopes. Most of my group (everyone but me and 1 other girl) is education majors, so we'll definitely be spending some time teaching. It sounds like we'll be teaching teachers and libraries how to teach and help the kids better. We might also do a little teaching for the kids. The age group that Ethiopia Reads schools work with are Pre-K through Kindergarden so that is going to be so much fun! The only scary thing about the teaching plan is that I don't know anything about education, much less teaching others how to be better educators.
So tonight I told the group about my hope to introduce art and color to the children. When I was deciding where to go, our campus's dean of chapel told me that Ethiopia Reads was potentially looking for people to teach the fine arts. He told me that kids over there don't even have color; most of them have never used it. As an art major I can't even imagine that... (side note: I'm sorry if I'm repeating something from an earlier post... I can't remember). Anyway, I shared this desire to introduce color and drawing to the kids and Sarah (the professor's wife) said she thought it would be great to do something art related. So we will probably have that involved somehow, because they do want to tailor the schedule according to us. When I think about showing the kids color, I get this image of face paint and messy hands and drawing with bright colors on each other's skin. I'm not sure if that's a realistic vision, but it's joyful nonetheless.
We also got a look at where we'll be staying while in Addis Ababa. There's a guest house there that we get all to ourselves. He looked up some pictures of it for us and it is SO NICE. I feel incredibly ignorant for thinking that we would stay in shacks with dirty floors and walls that don't even stretch from floor to ceiling... I'm (pleasantly) surprised to find that not all of Africa is so poverty stricken. I'm also really embarrassed that I thought that in the first place... I'll include another post after this one with a link to the guest house's website so you can see where we will most likely be staying.
We are supposed to read the book "When Helping Hurts" before we go to Ethiopia, so I need to get started on that. The only problem is I don't know where to find it... During our group meetings we'll be discussing the book. I'm really curious what I'll learn about short term missions from reading it, because I really feel so ignorant right now.
I think that's about all I know as of right now. Once things solidify a little more, I'll let you know!
Thanks for reading!
Aubrey
