Last Day In Joburg

Very quick upadate. We're off to Soweto for dinner with Claudia. She'll be here any moment.

So, we had a very busy and wonderful day. The girls had 3 hours to finish their fims, and they did it! They made some extrodinary movies. We rushed, rushed, rushed. Every hand was in the air at the end of the day...Andy! Erik! Andy! Erik! James! Help us! We made it through in the nick of time. These girls have created the most amazing movies Andy and I have ever worked on with kids.

They went off to practice their introductions to their movies to the adults during lunch, and James, Andy, and I feverishly posted their films on a hard drive for viewing.

We went to the adults symposium room at 2:30 and the girls each stood up in front of the group, introduced themselves, described their movies, then we played them. Honestly, there was not a dry eye in the place. These girls were so brave and open. Many of the girls broke down seeing their final films. They were so proud and so elated. We asked for comments from the adults after each film and they all had amazing things to say. It was amazing to look around the room and see both the men and women crying out of pain and joy.

Sandra handed out roses and Andy handed out certificates of completion to all of the girls. The girls were in love with both. They hugged each other, all of us, then we sadly said goodbye.

The adult symposium went extremely well and Sandra has a ton of new ideas (go figure).

We quickly packed everything up and high-tailed it home. We're exhausted, but on a high.

So, dinner in Soweto. We'll get pictures. We have a ton of pictures to post on Shutterfly, but no time to do it now. We'll do it from Dar es Salaam tomorrow.

Not sure how good the Internet will be over the next two weeks, so bear with us if our blogs are less frequent. We promise to provide all the details and take some more great pictures. Also, I'm going to attempt to post a couple of completed movies from our week in Joburg.

Thanks for the comments and emails. They truly are gems to us.

More (hopefully) tomorrow from Dar, and more blogging and picture posting coming soon.

Best,

E