We moved into our house yesterday! It feels good to have a home base set up and ready to go now. Many of us were feeling out of place not having a true place to call our own. We spent a good portion of the night cleaning the house after having spend most of the day working at the academy and ironing/putting up curtains. This morning Dan and Claire are working on more cleaning while I attend to the academy. You would be surprised at just how much cleaning there is to do at this house. We have been very blessed to have such a nice place to call home. It is very convenient for us, as it is just across the yard from the academy. They even put in a walkway so we don't have to walk through the mud when it rains to get to and from work!
The academy itself is starting to shape up nicely as well. Michael has been hard at work building storage shelves from the wooden crates we sent down. It is amazing! Michael spent two years working with Habitat for Humanity, so he has been our builder on this trip. The carts are all on wheels so we can move instrument storage around as needed. These may very well build the wall of my classroom. Micheal and the team have been working nonstop on these things. So far we have three guitar racks, a high brass car, a trombone cart, a low brass cart, and a really cool looking violin/viola rack. Still to come is a percussion cart to fit as much of the percussion stuff as we possibly can. It is really nice to have the instruments neatly put on shelves instead of organized on the floor. It has helped to make us look like we are closer to actually opening.
The people of Guyana have just amazed me so far! There are so many of our friends who stop in multiple times a day just to check in and make sure we don't need anything. Several have come and helped put together shelves or carry things for us. Others have gone out and brought back food so we could continue working and not miss a meal. Pastor Vivian thought of Eric and I while she was at the supermarket because she saw Diet Coke on sale. So the other day she took me to the store with her so we could buy as much as we wanted to stalk up with. We bought about $5,000 GYD work of Diet Coke! We now have a box of it in the academy and Eric wants to go back and buy the rest of their stock if it is still on sale. Several people have also been in and out to help us set up the house yesterday. It was nice to get to know Auntie Jean a little better as we worked on curtains yesterday.
On Wednesday we discovered a wonderful thing we forgot about. Ice. Dan brought some back for lunch and we were all very excited. Thursday someone went out and bought us more ice, and now that we have a fridge the first thing we did was fill the ice trays. Ice does not last too long around here, but it is wonderful while it is around. It is simple things, like ice, that we take for granted back home quite often. I never really stop to think how nice it is to have a room where I can go and have it be a place of my own, I never think of how nice it is to get served water as you sit down at a restaurant, and I never think about the wonders of ice in the hot sun. All of these things I have really thought about these past two weeks that I have been in country.
The fact that I have been in country for two weeks now is crazy. It feels like I have been here much longer, but at the same time it feels like it has been only a few days. We have met so many wonderful people, gone to a ton of new places, and we are slowly starting to learn our way around in Guyanese culture. I can only imagine how much I am going to learn while I am here, and I am very excited to see my students learn right along with me. We will be able to teach each other. I really can't wait for the school year to start so that this next small chapter can begin!
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