Dawn's Blog

Well, most of the flooding has gone down by now. Most of the roads are open and the trails around here are no longer mud pits. So far we've mostly been doing normal orientation and training stuff, slowly feeling less lost and confused. We did some ice breaker and team building games, wrote letters to ourselves, got TB tests, went over our handbooks, and did a whole bunch of paperwork.

Today, however was awesome. Let's just say that I fell in love with drumming this morning, and I plan to be a professional by the end of my stay here. There is a therapeutic drumming program here, and we spent 3 hours in the yurt playing West African drums this morning. I enjoyed it immensely, and I can definitely see how it can be therapeutic. We get to do drumming once a week with our Americorps team, and also with our kids when we start working with them. The drumming instructor is also teaching a workshop to get certified to facilitate therapeutic drumming, which is offered to us for free.

Immediately after our drumming session, we got to watch a graduation ceremony, which was also one of the most incredible things to experience here. I can't really say much about things that go on here for privacy reasons, but this individual seemed to have come a very long way during his time here, and it was good to hear such encouraging stories.