Nazaret and Babagayu

Maurice:

As the trip comes to an end, so many emotions are running through everyone’s mind. I’ll get to that shortly. While we were in Nazareth, we visited my twin school, St.Joseph and we actually got to meet some of the students even though there weren’t many at the school due to testing. The 1^st day we played with the kindergarten (KG) which was really fun because they were so energetic about seeing us. They also sung a couple different songs for us which were really nice and they sounded beautiful. The staff, afterwards, held a ceremonial coffee ceremony which was one of the best because the KG came in and danced for us while we were drinking coffee. When we got done with the school, we went back to the house to eat lunch. After lunch, we decided to go to a natural hot spring and the water was boiling hot. That was probably because it was hot outside and that warmed up the water. Me and a couple others decided to go get massages, which were excellent and if I had a choice I would go back and get another. We also had ice cream too which was really nice. When we got back, we ate dinner and after that we reflected.

Then on Friday, we went back to the school, but it was a different part of campus where the older kids go to school. One of the brothers who work there gave us a brief history of the school and a few statistics. The highest paid tuition is 152 birr, the lowest 98, and the avg. class size was about 55-60 students in most classes. He then took us for a tour around school and the school is very beautiful and very well kept up, even though it was made in 1951, it still looked nice. We later saw the senior class and introduced our self to them. We saw the library, computer room and the fields they play on futbol and basketball on and we played basketball there. We ate lunch and left for Babagayu.

During the last reflection, a lot of people had a lot of mixed emotions and were stuck between “I want to go home” and “I don’t want to leave this place.” And I see where they come from because it’s been three weeks since we’ve seen our families and friends; at the same time, we don’t want to leave a place like this and everyone we’ve meet on the trip because we’ve become so close with one another. No matter where we are or where our future lead us, we will still have all of the great memories from ETHIOPIA.