Cultural Field Studies

This past week, Michael, Kathleen and Joshua all got to go on Cultural Field Studies(CFS) trips with their classes.  They were gone Wednesday through Friday.  The 6th grade class went to Lake Nakuru and here is what Joshua had to say about his trip:
"The first day, we saw a bunch of goats, cows and a fair amount of zebras.  We also saw 2 gazelles, baboons, 2 warthogs and a peacock.  The drive was a long one - 5 hours.  The afternoon was cool and fun.  We played and planted trees.  The next day we went on a safari and I saw impalas, guineas, cape buffalo, velvet monkeys and giraffes.  We also painted a classroom for a local school.  The third day, we drove home."

Unfortunately, his camera didn't work and I haven't been able to get pictures from anyone else yet.

Michael had our good camera and he got lots of great pics - just none with him in them.  I'll let his pictures do most of the storytelling about the 7th grade trip:

View of the Rift Valley as they were driving up to their location.

 That first afternoon they walked on Crescent Island with the wildlife.  Evidently that is the site where Out of Africa was filmed and lots of wildlife were brought in - with no predators.  Now, tourists can walk among them.

Mike was in charge of devotions for the trip and over the course of the 3 days, they talked about God as Creator, Man's Fall and subsequent need for restoration, & Christ, the Restorer.  One night around the fire after devotion time, the kids asked questions for a good 30 minutes.

They had goat for dinner one night.

About 50 kids from a local school came over to spend the afternoon.  They had a planned game of "football."

Then an unplanned one.

Then another spontaneous hand game broke out.

Later, the Rosslyn group had a shaving cream war!

The next day, they went out on the lake...

for some hippo viewing!  They said there were about 1000 hippos living in that lake.

 There was lots of other wildlife too...

Kathleen had this to say about her trip:

 CFS was lots of fun. Though the drive there and back wasn’t as fun. The road was very bumpy, no actually most of the road can’t even be described as a road. It was covered in rocks and ruts, and most of the time the overlander was tilted at weird angles. Once the overlander went over a big rock and I fell out of my seat and into the seat 1 isle over.  

   Once we got to Mount Suswa, our destination, we had to decide if we were going to climb to the highest peak on the rim or were we going to climb halfway. I chose halfway because someone I knew told me that the view halfway was better than the one at the top.  Then every one who wanted to go to the top started hiking. After they had gotten a good head start the group that was going halfway started. The hike was hard and the trail was small but it wasn’t terrible. The sky was cloudy so it wasn’t very hot but the clouds were taunting us by looking like it was going to rain. We got 5 drops of rain total the whole weekend. The view at the halfway mark was beautiful. You could see the campsite but it was a tiny speck.

   We got back about an hour or more before the other group which meant we got first showers, first pick on tents, and we were able to scout out the campsite. After the other group got back we had dinner around the campfire. Then a Massai person talked about their traditions and some of their history.  After that was free time. Mr. Slaughter, one of the teachers, read from his creepy story book that he only reads on CFS. Lights out was at 10 and everyone went to their tents and went to bed. I think I might have been the only person who got a full night's sleep. Apparently it had been really windy that night and no one had gotten much sleep, except for me. I slept straight through it. The next day we were split into 2 groups, one went caving and the other went to work on the service project.  I went caving first and let me tell you those caves smell terrible. The first part of the caves smell bad but compared to the baboon part of the caves, they smell amazing.  Then when you get to the bat part of the caves the baboon part smells good and the first part smells amazing. When we got out of the caves we had lunch and went to the work site while the other group went caving.

   At the work site we worked on digging up rocks so that the church could build a water thing there. I used the rocks to make a wall to keep the animals from coming to the water when they weren’t supposed to. My principal was on the trip with us and told me I should become a stonemason because I did such a good job on the wall.

   After that we went back to camp and had dinner.  After dinner some of the students talked about different things. Then we had free time and after that we went to bed. The next day we got up and had to get packed up before we could have breakfast.  After that we played some drama games, then got in the overlanders and started to go home. The overlander I was in broke on the way home. We all had to get on the other 2 overlanders and make the tedious drive home. The overlander I got put in was already too heavy so it was a very scary drive. All in all it was still fun in a tiring kind of way.