Karin's time with Mercy Ships

Hi friends! If you haven't had a read already, here is a link to the article put out by Education Central ! More updates to follow about the actual runnings of the hospital, surgeries and patients...!

School on a ship  School has been running since early August and it has been quite a journey! Academy staff Grade 4/5 looking fly Gosh am I learning a lot, teaching on a ship!  We teach the typical Primary subjects of Math and Language Arts (literacy), but some subjects I haven't taught before, or the same way, include Bible, Social Studies (history this year), Science and Life Skills. The students also have Art, Drama, Computers, PE and choir, to allow us some admin time.  The ship is equipped with a pretty cool playground up on the top deck (unfortunately only up to 12 year olds allowed...) where they can play.  The children go home to their families for lunch and then come back for afternoon sessions.  One new experience was observing the action while the ship was evacuated for fortnightly fire drills. We were given the chance to watch the happenings from inside the ship - lighting the 'fire' in the laundry room, watching the emergency respon...

Yes, this post will be about arriving at the ship! The ship! The one Sarah is pointing to, in case you missed it. This is my new home for 2 years.  Drills, oh so many drills. Drills on the dock, drills at sea. And my classroom (being completely internal) is an allocated safe haven for any safety concerns.  Las Palmas port - look at where I lived! In Spain!  Teacher Orientation week out on the dock (in between fire drills, power outages, internet outages, blasting music over the P.A.).   My class! Fourth/Fifth grade on our field trip - day 2 of school, in Santa Cruz.  Trip to Santa Cruz with the Elementary classes - all 19 of us:D  Me looking VERY official, performing a stowaway search (with one of our resident gurkhas) before our sail. Why would someone want to escape from Canary Islands to Senegal, you ask? That is a very good question. We didn't find any.  Dolphin watching on the bow, during the sail to o...

Ok... so this blog post is only 5 weeks late, and if you know anything about me, you're likely not surprised at this fact. So let's start with 6 weeks ago - this will be a whirlwind tour of our 'field practice' in Dakar, after leaving the International Support Centre in Texas. Texas had very quickly become home after just over 5 weeks, many laughs, long days, insect bites, far too many deep fried foods and a developing Southern draaaawl - best we leave before it's too late (I've heard it's catching...)! Story by photos - read between the pictures:D Our home for the two weeks - a guesthouse on the premises of the Dakar Academy  A local beach just a few minutes walk from our accommodation True tourists Our crew were split over the two weeks we were there, to work on different projects - Painters, Diggers and Ceiling and Cleaning crew. Ok believe me, the dirt pile was MUUCH bigger when we started. Yes, this was 2 weeks work, I have the ...

Back to school  This last week we had another opportunity to meet with the Academy team here, and work through a few more of the details of school life. Since we will have very small classes, we participated in a few small group and larger group challenges, to think through the different group dynamics with each size group. (With marshmallows along the way, I wasn't complaining:D) Challenge: to build a tower with marshmallows and spaghetti, and then built a structure to support textbooks, using only hard lollies, marshmallows, frosting and pretzels..!  Barbecue We have definitely made the most of the Texan cuisine here, looking through my photos, I seem to pose with food more than I need to... Stanley's Barbecue is apparently #2 in Texas for authentic barbecue, so why not? I'm not sure I'm fully converted, but I might need to sample a few more times...;) On our last day of onboarding, Dr Andrew invited us New Zealanders and a few others to his house for a ki...

The last 4 weeks feel like they have flown by; so quickly, this place has become home. I almost don't know how I managed to live without 20 other people in the house! Texan times:  Rodeos in Texas are the real deal! Tassels, spurs, cowboy hats, yeehahs and everything fried and covered in cheese... need I say more? I keep asking whether the hyper-Cowboy look is put on for these events, but apparently this is pretty standard Texan style... Almost as authentic as my outfit... Driving to the rodeo, we passed through a lightning storm. We braved the rain a bit until it stopped, and during the rodeo watched the most incredible lightning lighting up the sky. Yes, those are steel seats... health and safety much? 4th of July celebrations - 'yard games', fireworks and good ol' fashioned hamburgers. Who could ask for any more? Room mates - Susanna, me, Whitney, Lydia Our elementary teaching team The past few weeks' training:  * Week 2: Foundat...