Ready for the Weekend...

I hope all of you had a good weekend! Mine was pretty chill. After sleeping in until about 8:00 am (AMAZING!) I worked on worksheets for reading and math class. The kids are finally understanding patterns a little better I think! After working on lesson plans and what not, Jen and I went to go watch some soccer. Our team was playing the championship game and they won 5-0! They got a big trophy although I’m not sure where they are going to put it! It was super hot outside and I felt sorry for all the soccer players playing in the sun. Tony and Riley don’t think they played very well at all, but hey, everyone has their off days! We had a meeting that night. It went quite a long time but Kaylie did a great testimony and Pastor Carlos did a good sermon. I went to bed kind of late so getting up the next morning to work out did not go very well. I hit the snooze button instead. J

Monday morning went better than usual I think. I always dread Mondays because it’s the start of a whole new week, but when the kids greet me with a smile coming into the classroom, it makes my day brighter! I’m really happy that my kids are starting to communicate more with me! Especially JT, EJ, and Starla. They tend to be more shy, but now JT is singing super loud in worship and raises his hand to pick songs and say what he’s thankful for. Since the gym is being used for the evangelistic series, it is full of benches and the stage. So I took the kids outside to the playground. The past couple of days has been super hot and by the last 15 minutes of recess all the kids were sitting inside the little hut with me to be shaded from the sun. Poor EJ hit his head really hard on a swing. He didn’t cry at all but he’s got a nice big bump on the side of his head!

The playground just got a new piece of equipment… A scary merry go round where kids fall off and get trampled! I know they don’t have them in Oregon anymore because so many people were getting hurt on them and I can already see disaster coming with this thing. The kids were really excited about it though and they all took turns on it.

I showed my Kindergartners some pictures of my family today on my computer and they LOVED it! They were all excited and kept yelling “Ms. C! That’s you Ms. C!” “Yes kids that is Ms. C and Mr. and Mrs. C and Mrs. Pierce.” The parents also said I had a beautiful family J I have to agree! One of my high school computer classes asked about my family and friends so I showed them some pictures as well. They loved all the pictures too! Since the gym is taken over with benches for the meetings, for boys PE we had to move a bunch aside so we could at least play half court basketball. The boys were SO happy to be playing basketball instead of volleyball! Apparently basketball is really big around here! At the grocery store, we found some amazing stuff.. FRESH FRUIT AND VEGGIES! Oh I got lettuce, tomatoes, onion, grapefruit, and made myself a fantastic dinner sandwich. Lettuce, tomato, mayo, Siracha sauce, and whole wheat bread. I was SO happy!! Oh and I definitely bought some rootbeer. I’m pretty sure I deserved it! Pastor Carlos did another great meeting that night and he told us that whoever wanted to come up front who is having hardships or difficult times in their lives to come up so he could pray for us. So Danny and I went up together and we all had a prayer. After the meeting, I went to the boys apartment and helped Danny grade. He had been sick for a few days so he was behind on grading. So we stayed up pretty late grading a whole bunch of papers. It’s actually pretty hard grading other teacher’s papers because you don’t know how they grade or what their system is. I started falling asleep around midnight so I went home to bed, but poor Danny was up for a quite a while after I left.

Tuesday morning came bright and early. Well more early than anything. There isn’t much sunlight coming in when I wake up because we are right by another building so it makes it all the harder to get out of bed because it is still darkish outside. I have found that although my kids can be oh so frustrating and inattentive, I am learning to love them more and more everyday! Their sweet smiles, laughter, and hugs just warm my heart. I know that sounds cheesy but it’s so true! But their attention  spans just drive me crazy!! I made a new system today for sitting on the floor in a circle for when we have worships and other things. I always have to separate kids and they just cannot keep in one place! I taped down 13 different colors of construction paper around the circle and every time it’s time to sit down in the circle, I give each child a random color square and they have to sit on the corresponding color in the circle. In is totally random and I tell them they have to have their butts on the color to be able to pick songs or do anything else. First time it seemed to work pretty well! I’m finally starting to get creative! My mom sent me some little fruit flavored marshmallows and I shared some with the kids at snack time. Oh the excitement! “Thank you Ms. C! These are so yummy!” Alyanna decided to save some of hers for her sisters so I gave everyone a little more so she could have some as well as take some for her sisters. During recess, 3 girls wanted to go get water so I took them all to the drinking fountain. Yuree, who seems to cry over most everything slipped and pretty much did the splits on the way back. I helped her back up and she was totally fine and walking normally. When we got back to the gym however, she decided to suddenly start dragging her leg like it was useless. I said: “Yuree, I’m pretty sure your leg is just fine.” She looked up at me with an Okay fine Ms. C look and ran off to play again. Oh silly Yuree. My mom also sent me some foam animal stickers and the kids were fascinated with them! One of the mothers said they had never seen those before and they didn’t have them on the island! I’m really glad my mom sent me so much stuff because the kids seem to love all of it. Especially the stickers! I put a lot of stickers on their homework. 

Boys PE and computers is always nice to teach because I get to interact with kids that actually understand me! They all seem to like me I think and I’ve even got a special handshake with Tristan who also goes my church in Kitti! J They’re all funny and still love to mess with me and Roy and try to mix up their names so we get them confused. It doesn’t work as well as it used though! In one my classes, I have an Elona, Keyonna, and Ivana! I got all those girls mixed up a lot at the beginning!  

I went to the children’s meeting to help out instead of going to the adult one. We sang a bunch of songs and then watched part of a Veggie Tales. I made friends with Haylee’s little sister,  CJ who is absolutely adorable!! The kids here are all so cute! Well have a goodnight everyone!
Please pray for Karen as she’s had a fever and something is really wrong with her throat!