Issue #54
April 17, 2000

Dear Friends and Family,
It has only been a few days since I have written, but there are a few thoughts from the last few days that I wanted to tell you about. I'm not really sure what they have to do with anything, but I thought you might find some of it interesting or humorous.

BEES - The campus has recently been inhabited by a swarm of bees. They have taken over the avocado tree behind the apartment building that I live in. They have placed two boxes with honey in them to attract the bees so they would make their hive there and then be removed at night. I'm not sure if those two boxes got full or what but they were gone the other day, but the bees weren't. There is now a new box. I hope they are gone soon. I don't really enjoy walking by that swarm of bees everyday.

FIRE - Fires are not something we think about much here since all of the buildings are cement, but on Friday, it was brought to our attention. Smoke was coming out of the roof of one of the storage buildings. The workers were trying to find out where it was coming from. There are four different rooms and each was filled with smoke. They finally discovered it was the incidental store room. A couple of the elementary classes got to observe smoking toilet paper flying through the air as it was removed from the room. A light had caught a beam in the ceiling on fire which had caught the toilet paper on fire. Later in the day there was still a big smoldering pile of toilet paper.

DRILLS - This fire caused the dorms to think about the need for fire drills. On Saturday evening in the middle of the night, Bethlehem Dorm (high school girls) had a fire drill. The problem was that when they rang the bells to get the girls up, other buildings could hear it. Several staff heard it and thought we were having an evacuation drill. They were outside trying to figure out if they were supposed to go the chapel or not. I slept through it and didn't even know it happened.

DOGS - Many of you have heard about my dog, Levi. Levi is getting quite large and when I take him for a walk it is a question of "who is walking who?" Last night, I was trying to walk him until he was tired. Another dog, Belle, was out, and they were wrestling around. Levi was still on his leash. Belle decided to take off, Levi followed. I ended up scraping myself up off the dirt. It wouldn't have been so bad, but there was a whole group of people standing by, and several of them were visitors on campus. On of the visitors caught Levi for me.

RAIN - The rain has finally come. This morning was dark and cloudy. We knew a storm was coming. There was a little rain in the morning but not too much. When I walked home at lunch the sun was shining I thought the storm was over. A few minutes later the wind came rushing through. There were doors slamming. Things flying through the air. Levi was standing outside wondering what was going on. I finally brought him inside. The rain came a few minutes later. When we returned to our classrooms, they had to be returned to order. Things had blown off of the desks and bulletin boards. Curtains were hanging crooked. I really enjoy the tropical rain storms though. The nicest thing was that it made it cool. It was only 79 degrees in my classroom this afternoon instead of the mid to high 90's as it has been. I went into town this afternoon to see the tailor, and she was wearing a jacket all buttoned up like she was really cold.

PALMS - Sunday at church was really neat. In honor of Palm Sunday, the front of the church was decorated with palm plants. I don't think you can get the full effect without having big tropical palms. It was a nice backdrop to the pre-Easter sermon.

TESTING - We finished our first day of testing. It is going better than I expected. William, my French student who is still learning English, looked at me like I was crazy when I gave him the first test. He is trying, but I'm sure he really doesn't have a clue.

Just thought I would give a glimpse of what life is like around the ICA campus. No day is the same, and you ever know quite what to expect. I hope your week has its humorous events as well.

In Christ,
Traci Epps