The Ugly Duckling

The Ugly Duckling is a fairy tale written by Danish poet Hans Christian Andersen that is known all over the world and has been turned into an opera, musical, and animated film. The story is of a homely little bird in a barnyard who is teased by the other animals, but as he matures they all realize that he is actually a beautiful swan.

So why am I telling you about this? Well, because actually over the next 18 months or so Dalat will be going through a similar transformation. During this time, we will be going through sort of an “ugly” phase with lots of construction and a campus that will not be so beautiful. For example, during the last Christmas break we dug large trenches throughout the campus to provide utilities to our new dorm building (the Lighthouse) and in preparation of our new high school building (the Harbor). This tore up our road and made it unsightly. This will be how our road will look for the next year and a half as we do not want to spend money on resurfacing only to have to do it again after the next construction phase.

As we move towards completion of our campus development we will have some “ugly” phases. There will be some buildings that need some paint that we won’t paint (because we will soon be tearing them down), there will be some ugly fencing/cladding put up around the construction of the Harbor, there will be some landscaping that will have to wait, and so on.

The great news is that just like that fairy tale about that little duck we will soon transform into a beautiful campus that will be a blessing for years to come.