School in Armenia

Monday, March 17
Today we loaded up the vans and headed into Armenia, where our American teenagers met up with their Belizean counterparts. After some shy and giggly introductions, we all grabbed buckets of paint and began to slap paint, Tom Sawyer-style, on the weathered boards of three school classrooms. Painting is a nice way to get to know somebody, since conversation is not forced to be continuous, but just happens as a natural part of the process. By noon, our enthusiastic crew looked to be about half done with our task for the week, and I was thinking uh-oh, what about the rest of the week! But Mark has figured out a few more things for us to do, not to worry.

I met the principal of the school, and found out that classes are typically over thirty kids, which is pretty amazing considering what the inside of the classrooms looked like. The classroom I first entered shocked me. The one blackboard was about 3’ x 6’ and was badly scratched and marred. There were two huge holes in the blackboard, and I wondered how I would use it! The classroom had a stained concrete floor, desks in various stages of disrepair, shuttered windows with no glass or screens, and posters that looked like the same ones you’d see in a US elementary classroom. My eye found the mandatory list of classroom rules. One of the class rules was “no stealing”; not something I’d think to put on my list! I couldn’t imagine thirty lively kids in that little room. What we cast off would be absolute heaven to whatever teacher God calls to teach there.

Peggy