I have not written for a long time to anyone except Mary because things had gotten very busy here for me. As final exams drew near, many teachers and students had been asking for additional help. My schedule was quite full between going to classes to assist teachers during the school day and tutoring after school.

The students have had exams all this week, and will again until Thursday, May 25. Can you believe they also give these final exams to the kindergarten? Of course, the exams for them do not last nearly as long, but still, it seems a lot of pressure for such small children. After Thursday, the children do not have to come back to school until June 5 when they get their results and that will end the school year. I do not know what "passing" is here. They do not base marks on 100 percent like we do. All of their exams have a total possible score of 75.

Lest you think that the teachers or I will be free all this time, think again. Each class has at least 40 students. Exams are given in each subject. The teacher grades her own exams, and then passes them on to another teacher who is assigned to recheck for any errors. After the second teacher rechecks, I get the exams to go through. I do not have to recheck everything, but spot check certain items and read through any essays. Remember, everything is done in English, and I am the only one here for whom English is a primary language, so I check for proper usage. It is a lot of work.

Today, we spent the whole morning cleaning up from yet another dust storm. These things like to come up in the middle of the night so that you don't know it is happening. If they came during the day, we would be able to close all doors and windows quickly before too much dust came in. At night, by the time you know it is happening, there is already a layer of dust over everything in the house. You can actually see the dust in the air as you walk though the house. Even after you clean, more dust settles down, so the process has to be done a few times. This was the third major dust storm so far, and they tell me this goes on at least until September. It is not a lot of fun. Today I decided to take all of the knick-knacks and books and anything extraneous off of my shelves and put them in drawers just so that I don't have quite so many things to dust off again.

Just to make the whole cleaning process more fun, we are dealing with temperatures of around 120 degrees. You can feel yourself melting away, and a shower only cools you off while you are still in the shower. Even the process of showering is different now. Because of the intense heat, the water gets warmed up to a very uncomfortable temperature. There is no such thing as refreshingly cool water coming out of the tap during the day. In the morning, it is cooler, so we fill large buckets with the cool water in the mornings, and that is what we use for "showering" later in the day. Sometimes during the day there is no running water.

As you can see, the heat affects us in many ways. In addition to the hot water, or lack of water and the dust storms, we also have many power outages or power surges, so even the fans we depend upon to keep us "cool" go off. Doing laundry becomes even more difficult as well since everything has to be done by hand. The computers, the phones, the refrigerator, everything goes. Power outages are particularly interesting at night when you can't even see where you are going. Another effect the heat has is to cause candles to burn at a very rapid speed, so they last only a short time in a power failure. Sometimes, if we are gathered downstairs, we just sit there until the lights come back on.

In case you are wondering, yes the power has gone out during the school day. Imagine the outdoor temperature being 120+ (classrooms are even hotter since there is not good ventilation), you are taking final exams, and both the lights and the fans go off in your classroom! I can see now why they used to end the school year in March and begin the new one in April. Students were still in school until early June, but at least they didn't have to worry about exams in the heat. The only good thing about the September to June calendar for them is that they will not have projects to do over the summer as they used to, which from what I understand became burdensome for the students and took away the freedom of summer.

I guess there are advantages and disadvantages to every system.

As we are well into our summer here, I hope those of you back home are enjoying the beauty of spring, including the rain and cool temperatures.

Sister Anne