The Last Week:

The last week was filled with wrapping up the adventure. We painted the Canteen (Lunch) area at Hilton, bundled sticks to border the gardens with, and Gospel high school came on Friday for their very first Best Buddies visit. It all ran pretty smoothly. The painting was so fun. A lot of my friends from the team helped me get it done and it turned out great! The stick bundling got done in no time because once we started working on it, tons of the students wanted to help out too. They were so willing to help and very good at it. Something cool about many of the projects were that the children were willing and able to help out with them. That way, they not only learned in the process, but can look at their work and feel accomplished. Best Buddies worked out great! The students were very enthusiastic about it. They had really taken joining the program seriously. Not too long before they came i had travelled to their school to tell some of them about it. Only some because their school is huge!!! They really listened and you could tell this by the way they acted when they got to Hilton. It wasn't as successful as i had hoped. There were only twenty students there because the principal at Gospel had decided to cut the number down and there were no deaf students, but hopefully these logistics will be fixed as the program continues. I am going to elect a president to help run the program while i am in America and it hopes are that it will grow and be very beneficial for the people there. 

There are still some project ideas that i want to work on and hope to either hand them off to one of the team members who are still in Fiji or work on them through email while i am in America. Im hoping to talk to some people here that might be interested in helping get grants in order to make a way for the deaf students at gospel high to have teachers who are able to teach them in sign language instead of needing an interpreter that isn't knowledgeable enough to translate all the subjects.

I also want to create a way for the Hilton kids to be able to participate in more service activities because they love to serve and it really helps them learn and grow by having hands on activities. The students helped me a great deal with the projects we were working on at their school, for example the stick bundling, but also the cutting and painting of signs for the gardens. They loved it and didn't want me to take the brush away from them to do any of it myself. They were happy to help and loved the experience. This is evidence of their desire to serve and learn.