...bear with me...

Hello All!
***NOTE: this blog is being written at 5:30am on Saturday September 6. We have no power, therefore I cannot post it until we do…***

This week has been craaaaazy, and I apologize for not updating sooner!!


Let’s fast forward until Wednesday. We get to school, and some parents are saying, “We have no school today. We saw it on the news and in La Vega (next town over) there is a huge storm that is producing tornadoes.” Holy snap. So Mr. Peterson jumps on the horn to see what is going on. Thankfully only a mere 15 min. later he discovers that we are indeed not supposed to have school. Therefore we have to call all the parents, and have them come get their children. I only had maybe 6 students. (3 of them being triplets…)

We went outside with Miss Karyn Staats (MS/HS English teacher) and Miss Christie Collver (MS/HS Science teacher) to play this AWESOME Viking game that Miss Staats taught us. ((side note: now every time my students see Miss Staats, they always ask her if she is busy teaching because they want her to take them outside to play the Viking game…hahahahaha)) We were playing with the 7th and 8th graders that were left, and then Miss Collver taught us how to play a game called Swat. Basically you run around and beat each other with a towel or a sweater in our case. Yeah, that definitely wouldn’t fly in the States. Then I taught them Elbow Tag. Productivity at its finest.

In the DR, there is one man The Director of Education (sounds kind of like Harry Potter to me…) makes the decision for the whole country as to whether or not we will have school (aka if it is raining in Evansville, people in Ft. Wayne won’t have school)………… or at least that was the case until Thursday night when the Director gave each school (or the board of the school…) the authority to close school. Gracias a Dios.

Well this supposed storm never hit us. So we got a day off school (kinda…we had to stay until noon…which was good since ACSI (Association of Christian Schools International) was coming on Thursday to inspect our school to see if we could begin the accreditation process so that our Seniors could graduate and get diplomas and take the National Exams.

Thursday: we get to school. I’m missing 4 students. Excellent. Brings the grand total down to 8. ACSI is here. Splendid. We’re not supposed to be having school, again, for reasons unbeknownst to us, but hey, ACSI is here, so we gotta look like we have a running school. Therefore we dismiss at noon. Sweet. Let me paint you a picture of what my Thursday looked like. 8-9 Chapel. A pastor told all my kids they were going to Hell unless they accepted Christ. Sweet. Scare them into salvation. Works every time. 9-9:45 Spanish. (not taught by me…obviously.) 9:45-10 Break. 10-10:35 Sociales (not taught by me.)

Fantastic. I have less than an hour and a half. I can proudly say that we played Sparkle with our spelling words for probably 30 minutes. (I let the a student be the teacher and I played with them. I pwned them every time! YES.) Then we played Sparkle with our memory verse (Psalm 100:3 Know that the Lord is God. It is He who made us and we are His. We are His people, the sheep of His pasture. Beautiful verse, eh?) for probably 15 minutes. YES. 45 minutes left. “Okay, this week we have been talking about compassion. You need to either illustrate what compassion is or illustrate your memory verse” … aka coloring time. Sweet. I’m an awesome teacher. So productive. I busted out my phone (which can play music) and we listened to some High School Musical, Jonas Brothers, and Hannah Montana while we colored about Jesus. Could life get any better? I submit that it cannot! Sweet. Around 11:45 we packed up and went outside to play another rousing game of Elbow Tag. I was SUPER sweaty after that. hahaha

Friday: soooooo…good news? We may be moving houses next week. Our landlady is not super helpful when we have problems (like our septic system is messed up and so is our water pump…and hasn’t been fixed for a week…) so Maribel (our financial administrator) said we’re not in contract with her, so we can look for new houses. We have found a new house that is UBER close to the school and although it is smaller and costs 500 more pesos a month, I think we’re gonna do it. It’s a lot safer, our landlord lives on the property (rumor has it, he even has a gun…) and the proximity to the other teachers is great too…we have to accept/deny by noon today. I am fairly certain we are going to accept. PRAY for us, please, as we are transitioning to a new, smaller house and we are deciding what things to keep and what things to get rid of. There may be some tense moments, I’m not gonna lie.

.:nighttime:.
In rolls the clouds. What beauty. I’m not even gonna lie, I got some sweet pics. I’ll post them on my picture site. Get excited. It starts thundering and the wind starts blowing. You know what that means…yes. No power. Greaaaaaat. It was kinda good, gave us an opportunity to talk about money and financial stuff and all that good stuff as a house. We made dinner by kerosene lamp (after I effectively broke a second chimney to another kerosene lamp…awesome. now we’re down to one.)

DOUBLE awesome…….Brooke and my door slammed shut. And it’s locked. because there is (well...was...) no way to unlock it. because there was no door handle on the inside to UNlock it... oly schamolly. I try busting down the door. What a laugh! It’s solid wood. All that ended up happening was me getting a HUGE, HUGE swollen bruise on my hip. ((but worth it. What a great story.)) There’s also a video of me running down the hallway of our house and slamming into the door. and collapsing with laughter. OH MY GOSH. It was seriously one of the funniest things that has happened since I’ve been down here. I was crying so hard because I was laughing so hard. Then we attempted to watch The Notebook on my whacked-out DVD player on my computer…then it messed up and we got frustrated. End result? Bedtime at 9:15. COUNT IT. (Jessie Buske response, please, “counting it.”)

Funny story of the week:
In the DR, it is perfectly acceptable…nay…encouraged to love on your students. Totally different from the States where if you touch them you will get sued. haha Well, one of my boys kept saying, “Girls are stupid. Girls are boring. Girls are dumb.” I plucked that little sucker out of his seat and carried him outside my classroom (all the while he and the rest of the class was hysterically laughing) and made him say, “Girls are so awesome.” before he was allowed to come back in the classroom. What a hoot. Good thing this was during math time and we were having some subtraction review fun, not during a serious time. No worries, I pick my timing well.

Dr. Quinn, you would be so proud. I have been reading the Pigeon books to my students. They think that they are SO hilarious. They seriously run around now at recess or at break time imitating my pigeon voice and saying, “your mom would let me…LET ME DRIVE THE BUS…etc. etc.” SO funny. And they all want to read them as read alouds to the class, so if we ever have any extra time at the end of the day, I let them read out loud. I have short video clips of them reading that I’ll try and post on here too.

Funny story from last Sunday:
We’re sitting in church. For the second time that day. I’m awesomely wedged in between Tim and Karyn. I’m sitting there…oblivious to what is going on because the pastor is speaking so quickly and people are raising their hands. Sweet. No idea why. Karyn turns to me and says, “The pastor just asked who has ever killed anyone before.” My response, coughing to try and cover my laughter. Yes, folks, I had tears streaming down my face because it was sooooo funny. It’s good for me to be with people who make me laugh. I love it.

PRAISES of the week:
1. One of the other teachers let us borrow his Wireless router. So until we get ours (in 2 weeks when we get mail again) we will have internet. (if we have power…)

2. I’m getting to know the other teachers, and they are graciously accepting us into their houses and loving us and helping us get through some tough stuff going on.

3. Internet. I’m not even going to lie. I love that we’ve been able to have internet all week. It has been such a blessing because I have been kinda homesick…well, friendsick too…and being able to talk to my friends from home has been so fantastic. Encouraging emails are huge blessings to me.

4. Dr. Tyner… ((one of my fave professors who has really helped nurture me as a pre-service teacher and who never gave up on me even when things appeared that they were hopeless…)) Happy Birthday!!!! :)

PRAYER REQUESTS of the week:
1. my roommate Kelsey has a really bad form of Pink Eye. It’s highly contagious, and since I’m always with her, it kind of makes me nervous to get it. She went down to Santiago yesterday to go to the eye doctor and he confirmed that it was highly contagious. Sweet.

2. our moving transition because it is hard to move to a new place and get readjusted.

3. PATIENCE. As always.

4. For my teaching…I feel like I’m not being challenged or nurtured in my teaching, which is the whole reason I came…I don’t know how to be better than I am because of the little resources available. Pray that I will be able to challenge myself in my teaching…