RVA in a Week

The great part about being at RVA is there is no such thing as Sunday blues. When I get to Sunday night, I don’t usually dread Monday mornings, because there is always something fun or interesting happening that upcoming week. This week is the perfect example of a packed-out fun week.

Monday

Dinner with the Harteminks, the Dutch family who is here until next April. We enjoyed Honey-Mustard chicken and a gorgeous sunset out their back window. We were also expecting a Lock-Down Drill around noon, but that didn’t happen cause there was a shortage in the wiring on the alarm 🙂 Whoops.

Tuesday

Multi-Cultural Day! This is a fantastic celebration of all the countries represented by the student body of RVA. We conducted a special morning ceremony with cultural songs and drama skits and prayer, followed by a competitive group game and picture, big BBQ lunch in the Caf-O, and to top it off, Fireworks on Upper Field after sunset. I must admit that when the three students representing the USA carried the American Flag down the center aisle during the morning ceremony, I got a bit choked up as we sang the National Anthem. Here are the girls all ready for the day…

Wednesday

Pretty typical day, but still fun. Work up in the Guidance Office, Chai, Lunch duty at the Caf-O (every Wednesday I get to eat lunch for free! Melise and I dig the salad bar., Bible Study at Jan King’s to discuss the Psalms, Drama Rehearsal, and then I got to talk to my Grandma!

Thursday

12:30am. 24 Flu hit me hard, and I was absolutely wiped out until Friday morning. This was certainly not a “fun” part of the week, but I was reminded of God’s all sufficient grace and strength during this time…and it was good for me to be humbled and weak before the Lord.

Friday

Thankfully, I had enough strength after being sick to go to the local Tea Plantation Farm with some of the other RVA ladies from 10 to 4 on Friday while the kids were in class.

This farm is 40 minutes from RVA and is owned by a British couple, Marcus and Fiona, who inherited the tea business from their parents and now carry on the growing, picking, sorting, packing, distributing to the factories, and auctioning in Mombasa to brands such as Tetley’s and Lipton and PG Tips. Fiona is a wonderful, sweet lady who gave us a 30 minute history lesson on tea and how it is grown and produced and graded…she explained how tea is sorted and shook into different “grade levels” during processing…the “finest” bits become packaged as the premium export, and the stalkier, thicker pieces become packaged as more of a local Kenyan tea.

I learned so much from Fiona’s talk…for example, did you know that green and black tea come from the same tea leaves? The only difference is that green tea is not oxidized, and black tea receives exposure. Also, Mombasa (the coastal town in East Kenya) stands up next to Sri Lanka as the second biggest tea export in all of the world!

After the history lesson and a short walking tour of these beautiful grounds pictured here,

we enjoyed a fresh luncheon of homemade vegetable soup and rolls, beef with homemade mustard, carrots and green beans, creamed corn, and a scrumptious salad with avocado. For dessert, they served us local tea or coffee, with farm-fresh ice cream, fruit salad, lemon mousse, and cheese and crackers.

Saturday

Pinewood Derby! What, you say? Yes, a pinewood derby.

For months, RVA staff and students have been busy in the Wood Shop, creatively preparing their hand-built, pinewood derby cars for the big racing day, in which the cars fly down this 50 year-old race track and compete to be the fastest, most unique, best engineered, and best crafted derby cars. For those of you who are Dutch, imagine the “Shulbak” (sp?) game X 100 in size…and each car emerging out of a “horse-race-type-stall” to wheel down the slippery track and hit the finish line. Each grade competes against each other (5th to 12th grade), and there is also a Men’s and Women’s group at the end. One of my girls, Esther, won in the 9th grade group for “most unique.” Hers’ was an Outhouse 🙂

And, here was the overall winner for best craftsmanship:

It’s been a great week…I can’t believe it’s almost November, can you?