Day 12

Yesterday afternoon I got to play basketball. At first we just shot the ball around. It was me, a little girl and three guys. One of them is a good 10-12 inches taller than me, and very good. One time when he had the ball a stole it from him. So from then on he would gard me; I scorred a couple of points on him too. Tommy came down and we started a game. It was me, Ernest, and Shiabo, against Tommy, Gerta, and Emanuel. Ernest is the one I stole the ball from. It was a good game. My team was ahead most of the game, but Tommy's team got ahead a couple of times. In the end my team won; I shot the winning basket.

After the game I went up to the lab and worked on the computers some. Then the power went out so, we went to dinner. After dinner the light came back on so daddy went up to the lab. I took my clothes to my house since I had the key with me. I was just going to drop them off and go to the lab but my house parents invited me to eat some with them. They were having yam, and "some thing like gravy". That was tommatoes, onions, oil, fish, and peppers. It was all mashed up, and not too bad. After I ate some and they had finnished I went up to the lab. We didn't get much done last night. We re-imaged two computers, and wrote several posts.

This morning I heard the call for devotion but I was too tired to get up. I laid in bed for a long time. I finally got up at 7. Just as I was coming out of my room daddy walked up to the house to tell me breakfast was ready. He said that Latisha was a little concerned because I am normaly at the house before her. We had a rice sort of oatmeal. Daddy had seen it on the way to the semenar and asked Latisha if she would make it one day. It was pretty good. Daddy thought it was too hot though.

After breakfast I took a shower at the guest house since there was an actual shower. Then I went up to the lab. Daddy had gotten one other computer re-imaged. That made 3 out of 15 done. The graduation seremony for the kindergardeners was supossed to be at 9. We felt compelled to go to that. a little after 9 we walked down to the basketball court since that's where the ceramony would take place. There was a bunch of people milling around so we waited a little bit and then daddy went up to the lab to start some re-imaging. The music was so loud. You could hear the base just fine up at the lab. I stood around where the speaker wasn't pointed and took lots of pictures, played 2,4,6,1,1, and talked with people. There's a picture of me playing 2,4,6,1,1. Daddy came back and said that the re-imeging that we had left before hadn't worked, so we still only had three done. We stood around a bit and then daddy went up to the lab again. He was up there a long time.

Finally the graduation started and daddy was still at the lab. There was a prayer, some songs, some speaking and then they called up some people to sit at the front. Daddy was one of them, but he was still at the lab. I didn't know what he was doing or when he would be back or how important it was to have him to sit at the front but some people started looking around for him so I ran up to the lab to tell him and we came back. The graduation started about 10:30 and ended at 1. The kids did some coriography. There were prayers, and speaches. There were awords given out and there was rain.

Being a "photographer" I got to move around a bunch. At one point I just sat on the ground in the front instead of going back to my set and bothering people. The space between chairs is just a little bit more that leg room; almost as close as airplane seats.

After the graduation we went to the other guest house to have lunch. We ate with a lot of the speaker/anouncer/leader people who were part of the graduation. I was perfectly happy to just grab a box of crackers and go up to the lab to work since we only have today left but since we were "invited??" to have lunch with important people we at there. That was the most akward lunch I have ever had. I walked in the door and no one was talking or looking at eachother or doing anything. I didn't know where to sit or if I should sit or if I should say hi. So I stood there for a while and then one of the guys said hi and guestuded to a seat. I sat down and it was still quiet. After a couple of minutes Latisha said that lunch was ready. No one moved. Latisha said that you could serve yourself, the plates where here *gestures* and you could get however much you wanted. Finally some one got up. One side of the table went, we were on the other side. We waited for the Ghanaians on our side to go. When they finally went we got up too. The food was good but there was no talking. Tommy tried starting a couple of conversations, but he ended up talking to the other two Americans. It was so akward.

After lunch we came up to the lab and started two computers re-imaging. They finished. Horay! 5 out of 15 now. We started two more, cross your fingers that they finish... Yay, we've gotten several more re-imaged. We're up to 9, and one going, out of 15. We had left overs for dinner. And are back up at the lab. We're down to the last few hours now, since we'll be leaving VOH tomorrow morning.

We've just found out that it works to take th hard drives out of the computers and hook them up to a diferent computer to get them re-imaged. For some reason or other in their computers they wouldn't read the CD, or boot from the CD-drive, or are being some other problem. I think we'll get them all fixed. Daddy got the key to his house so if need be he'll stay up here till the computers are fixed or he gives up.


Replies:
Silly Marshall, not American football. It was American soccer. One of the boys had green tokens and the other had blue tokens that they used as the "players". The little rock was the soccer ball and some lager rocks made the goals. They "kicked" the "ball" by flicking the tokens. It was very interesting.

Thanks Heather. I hope your stay in Brazil is going well and you are doing good. Thanks for reading.