All the beautiful moments...

Another post from mid-March that never got posted:


So many beautiful moments that I just want to capture in my mind and never forget.  Isn't life always that way though?  Here's just a few that I want to remember from this week...

Funnest moment with the 5th graders:  They were being entirely too loud and rowdy on Wednesday, so I decided to let them yell if they wanted to, but they were gonna learn something while doing it.  So I started asking yes or no questions and told them to yell what they thought the answers were.  I've never had the 5B boys be so attentive to the questions I've asked :-)

Sweetest moment at school:  The father's day celebration was this past Friday and it was very cool to see so many fathers show up and participate.  Father's are absent from so many of the students lives, it was encouraging to see that there were some that truly cared and were trying to be good role models for their kids.  And of course, it was heart warming to see Papa Brewster and the other men from the hogar show up to be the little girls' "fathers" for the day.

Greatest blessing of the week:  Greg and Emily Bice along with younger brother, Andrew, were here for several days visiting.  Going out to eat, watching soccer games, and hanging out at the hogar with them and the girls was a great breath of fresh-air from the norm.  It is so easy to just fall into the same ol' routine week by week.  But their presence was truly a blessing from God to refresh our spirits a bit.

Finally, best teaching moment with the 8th graders:  We've started our short astronomy unit to finish out this partial and I decided I was going to begin with a discussion of Galileo and Copernicus.  At the end of the history portion, I wrote a few quotes from them and about them on the board and asked them to write in their notebooks what they thought one of them meant.  I don't often get to see the thoughtful side of their personalities and I think I want to do lessons like that more often with them as we finish out the year.

I wish I could write forever, but there's only so much time in a day.

The stories never end...

A blog from 3 weeks ago that never got posted (March 7-11):


Once you get used to life here, the different things that annoyed you the first few months turn into a long series of hilarious moments and stories.  For example, if you were a principle and decided that all the kids in 5th and 6th grade needed tetanus shots, you would definitely send the nurses into the classroom to give the shots at the teacher's desk without notifying the next teacher and of course it wouldn't matter at all if the rest of the kids were still in the classroom wandering around, yelling things at the kid whose turn it was, and eliciting a little bit of chaos.   As each student mustered enough courage to go forward (or endured sufficient ridicule from his/her fellow classmates that appearing a coward was the new issue), the nurses would just take a card from them, let the classmates engage in an endless barrage of unhelpful cliches, and stick them. A little cotton ball and they were sent outside for some fresh air.  Of course the nurses had the courtesy to ask which arm they write with so the soreness wouldn't effect their ability to do school work.  And I learned something very curious about my class: 90% are left-handed!  Go figure... Like I said, no longer annoying, just thoroughly entertaining.

Next exciting thing: teachers won the soccer tournament against the high school girls!  7th grade was the only grade to beat us and we played them again in the finals, winning 3-0.  It was a little anti-climactic really because we scored the first early on and they were never able to get past our outstanding portera (goalie), Dawnelle Clark of Jamaica! Hehe...

One last fun moment before I wrap this up... Thought I had gotten past most of the "you-are-like-a-celebrity-because-you-are-american" moments, but they still pop up.  At yesterday morning a mother was tying her girls shoes up in the entry and said something to me in Spanish I didn't catch.  I asked her to repeat herself and in Spanish she says, "My daughter wants to talk to you."  She was probably in kindergarten and I talked to her for just a minute as she asked me questions about where I'm from and if my eyes are really blue.  I've never felt more like Santa Clause in my life!

I wish life in the US were this hilarious...

Just so you know...

It's officially 100 days until I come home :-)

In honor of such an occasion, here's the picture of my first visit to my new house, 215 days ago!

Oh, I'll miss them so!

Last Friday was the Science Fair and I'm so proud of my students!  They did a beautiful job and of the 6 awards given to grades 4th through 11th, 4 of them went to groups from my classes :-D  These are the four groups that won:

The Explorers of Science, El Fuego en un Campo de Magnet

How to save money by making homemade airfreshner

Los Seguidores de Einstein: Natural Insecticides

Los Nutricionistas: Juegos Naturales y El Sistema Digestivo

The best part of all?  We get to take the winners to pizza hut tomorrow :-D  It's amazing how much you can get to know the kids and have so much fun with the trouble makers when you aren't trying to get them to do classwork.

More fun this week: Women's soccer tournament.  So far the Teacher's team is 2 and 1.  We won against 8th and 9th, but lost against 7th.  Next week we'll have the semi-finals and finals, we're still hopeful that we've got a good chance.  We've still got all of primary cheering us on!

Before writing this update, I had five or six things I thought I wanted to say, but now I can't remember any more of them.  Haha.

Entonces, ya me voy.

Los Gritos de Estudiantes...

Que bonitos los gritos de los estudiantes para la feria de ciencias!

The most wonderful teaching moment since Christmas was hearing the screams of excited students when I announced which science projects would be going to the school science fair.  Especially the fifth graders were really excited and it warmed my heart so much!  They were so proud of their projects and I am still beating myself up for forgetting my camera today, but I'll get pictures of the actual science fair anyway.

And just in case anyone was curious, no!  They are hardly like the ones in the States, at least as far as I can remember them.  The last one I saw was the one I did in fourth grade :-)

Fruit loops? Jewelry? Lights!

This is what happens when you're in the middle of Science Fair week and just need a little something fun in your life, courtesy of one of the best mom's in the world :-)

 I hope I have this much fun in the middle of exam weeks in med school...

Fresh air

My mom's facebook status today was about being able to have the windows open and fresh air in the house.  I'd forgotten how exciting of a thing that could be when you don't always have your windows open no matter the temperature outside, lol.  There are a lot of things I'm going to miss when I leave...

Not much exciting has happened in the past two weeks, at least not that I can remember.  What is going to be exciting is the Science Fair this coming Friday.  Or maybe a better word would be interesting, since no one seems to no what's going on except the one returning science teacher and we're all just pulling at straws to pull this thing together.  I'm praying that I have plenty of time during the afternoons this week to just be still with God cause I know I'm gonna need it after all of this craziness.  My biggest fear is that when I get to school tomorrow most of my students won't have done anything and I'll have to start holding their hands step by step, which I don't really have time for.  I'm also curious to know if the groups who said they were making electric generators, robots, and earthquake simulators are really going to do it...

Anyway, in my last blog I mentioned that my God-given goal for the next four months here is to cultivate the spiritual discipline of daily meditation and prayer.  I confess to you now, it hasn't been going so well.  The first week was exciting as I felt like God was giving me a new vision and direction to pursue, but this past week was just a little too chaotic.  Not trying to make excuses.  I'm just saying.  And I know that as far as chaos goes, this week will just be worse.  That being said, I was in a bit of a funk the last few days because I felt like I was failing at the one simple task God had actually given me to do.  And in the midst of my prayers struggling with finding my footing again I was reminded in my soul of this simple truth that I want to share with you:

My relationship with God does not work because of my faithfulness to daily quiet times.  It does not work because of my ambition for the gospel of Christ.  Its success does not rest on my ability to manufacture passion for a vision or a ministry.  It does not depend on being liked by people or never hurting anyone else.  And when I let myself think those things, I reveal my own stubbornness and pride.  My relationship with God works because of his faithfulness.  In all of the areas I come up short, he fills in the gaps.  In all of the ways that I am weak, he promises to be strong.  My position with God is not based on my faulty choices, but on his calling on my life.  It is still a mystery to me how the responsibility of man and the sovereignty of God walk side by side in our lives.  But what I do know is that I often get confused about which part is my responsibility and which is God's.  I am stuck in a manner of thinking that says my relationship with God is totally my responsibility.  What a joke that is when I consider that my relationship with him would not exist if he hadn't gone so far as to sacrifice his Son to establish it.  My relationship with God his based on his action, his faithfulness, his grace, his mercy.  Not my own.  And in light of my weak will, that's a comforting thought and a bit of fresh air for a stuffy heart.