The Witt Chicks' 1st Week

The Witt chicks have finally arrived! Last Sunday, which also happened to be my birthday, 7 new girls came.  Monday, all the new girls had orientation while the returning girls moved in.  So we are officially and finally a full house!

Picture of the front of Wittlingen. 

Closer-up picture of the main entrance. 

Their first day of class was on Tuesday, which was celebrated with an opening ceremony that proudly and excitedly started with all the seniors carrying in the flag of either their home country or country where their parents are serving.  Out of about 308 students from junior high to high school, over 53 countries are represented this year!  Isn’t that amazing? I feel like that would be a statistic for a small college!  This is definitely an international school. 

Seniors waiting to come down the aisle with their flags.

In our dorm alone, we have girls from all over the world—from Ireland to Russia to Tajekistan to Bangladesh to China to Korea, and the list goes on.  I love hearing their stories about living in different places and in different ministries and the joys and difficulties that go with it.  Some of these girls have lived almost their whole lives growing up and helping out in orphanages and such.  They are some very special girls and I am so excited to be serving them and living with them.

A few of girls at Chillin and Grillin.

It has been quite a week getting into the hang of things.  There is so much to do and so much to learn how to do.  With almost an entire new dorm staff, there are a lot of things we are still trying to figure out, like which rules to keep from last year and how to go about addressing certain issues.  But slowly and surely, I am getting the hang of things.

The tea party in the rain.

This past weekend was both a blast and exhausting.  As an RA, I work 70-80 hours a week, and I think a lot of that time is on the weekends because the girls are at the dorm all day and not at school.  After a school event called Chillin’ and Grillin’ on Friday afternoon, the girls came home and decided to have a nunnery tea party.  Half way through, it started raining, but that didn’t stop the girls.  We got our raincoats and umbrellas and continued to speak in our English accents and referring to each other as Sister Mary So and So!  High school girls are great. 

Above: Amy's troughing. 

Below: After I got troughed. Luckily, I was already wearing a rain coat. 

A short while after our tea party, the girls decided to break in a new Witt birthday tradition called troughing, which involves carrying the birthday girl down the road to the nearest town trough and dumping her in.  This first Friday just so happened to be one of my co-RA Amy’s birthday; so they pretty much attacked her and carried her to the middle of the town to trough her.  While I was trying to capture this moment on camera, some senior girls unexpectedly came and attacked me, throwing me in the trough as well, since my birthday was just a week before.  Keep in mind, this was all while it was 60 degrees out and pouring.  Needless to say, the Wittlingen birthday tradition of troughing has began.  The troughing was followed by a birthday cake and a movie for a lovely, quieter Friday evening.

Just a fun picture I took on a short walk behind our dorm.

Our living room.

Me and one of the girls. 

The office we repainted/redid.  It used to be an awful Texas theme. 

Our coffee room!

Saturday, after brunch, we took the girls to Carrefour, France, (the store was equivalent to a Walmart) to get school supplies and other necessary items.  After a long day at the store, we had a bratwurst bbq and watched another movie altogether.  I think this week was just all around exhausting for everyone, especially when you combine jetlag with the excitement of starting school again.  So Sunday too was more of a day of rest and doing homework.  Every Sunday night, though, we have dorm fellowship; and this weekend the dorm staff decided to talk about modesty and dress code, which included us RAs modeling appropriate and inappropriate attire.  J I’m hoping and praying the girls took it well. 

All in all this week has been both great and tiring.  I love getting to know all 21 girls, but sometimes I wish I just already knew all of them, that we could skip this beginning phase.  So that is my prayer request—for the relationships with the girls.