15/06/10

Yesterday I was leaving class when I saw one of my students from that class sitting outside, so I asked him what he was doing. He said that they had shut the mission gates this morning to keep out the late-comers. “But I really wasn’t that late!” he said “I arrived while you guys were still singing the national anthem, they had literally just shut the gate!” I smiled and told him it was a nice story, but we didn’t sing the national anthem this morning.
We are having a school-wide problem with kids arriving tardy to school, so our Pedagogical Director told us today that for about a week they would be shutting the gates at 6:45am. A lot of kids have also been leaving after they receive their bread at the 20 minute midmorning break or taking too long to return to class after, so they won’t be letting anyone leave during that break. It’s definitely a good thing and the kids need to start coming to school on time (kids will show up not just a couple minutes late, but over an hour late). The downside is that I had 13 out of 45 kids miss a test this morning, and I am guessing that at least some of them had intended on coming, but got locked out.
Submitted three grant proposals to the US Embassy in Maputo today. We have been working hard on them so it was nice to finally submit them, so now we just wait and hope that it was work our efforts.