Praising the Lord for a good day... :)

Celebrating successes...

Tonight I cooked. Like for real. Haha...

I made white rice for the first time in my life.

And I "blanched" (that's a new addition to my vocabulary) some fresh green beans.

Then I turned it into fried rice (which I LOVE!) including some green beans, green peppers, orange peppers, and onions.

So thankful for a successful first attempt...

Grocery store find of the week: Campbell's Cream of Chicken Soup

I'm starting to think that whenever I list something on here as being impossible to find in Honduras, I pretty much find it the next time I go shopping. That has definitely happened so far with Dr. Pepper, Cream of Mushroom, and Cream of Chicken.

So now I'd like to suggest that you can't get Rotel, Velveeta, worchestire sauce, pimentos, and chili powder.

Oh, and Chickfila, Zaxby's, and pulled-pork barbeque sandwiches. :)




And I might get to come home for my birthday weekend. Maybe... :)

Teaching with Love and Logic

I've really watched the book Teaching with Love and Logic spread like wildfire among many of my friends and fellow teachers this year. Similar to my abstinence from all things Twilight, I didn't think I was going to hop on this bandwagon - simply because it seems a bit trendy for me. However, as my students become more and more comfortable with each passing day, and as their true colors have begun to shine, I'm thinking it's possible that I can use all the help I can get.

I've started reading the book, and I'm about 70 pages into it. It seems to be all about the relationships between teachers and students and the ways that can motivate the students to perform, take responsibility for themselves, and to think through their own decisions. In some ways, I feel like it has very much affirmed my approach to teaching up until this point. I've always said that my students don't have to like me because I'm their teacher and not their friend. However, those who knew me and my students knew the reality of the situation was very different. Through building a relationship with my students, they responded positively to me.

This week, as I have felt bossy and controlling, overly serious, pushed to some limits, and have been described as "really strict" to another teacher, I have tried to tell myself that I am the adult and they are the children. I am their teacher and I am in charge. It does not matter if they like me.

Except that I'm really here for the purpose of building relationships with them and loving them. I'm here to share my faith with them and to disciple them. I know that my ministry will be much more effective if I can have both - a controlled classroom and a friendly, supportive relationship with my students... with ALL of my students. Not just the ones that come easy.

So we'll see how it turns out. My girls all seem very sweet, and the majority seem quiet and mild-mannered. Some of my boys are incredibly compassionate and polite. However, I have another group of boys who lack self-control and the ability to see how their words and actions affect anyone else around them. My first instinct to describe them includes words like self-centered, rude, obnoxious, and overly playful. I was spoiled by the way Vincent kids are usually taught to listen to and obey adults no matter what. Spending another nine months with some of these boys just the way they are right now seems miserable, and working to train them to change this behavior seems impossible. But it's got to be worth a shot.

Eduardo is back to pretending he's 15 again. Now I see why my parents didn't tolerate it when I rolled my eyes or talked back to them. I feel like he never listens to me - because he almost never follows directions when I give them to the whole group. He doesn't read my directions on the board and he acts like he doesn't hear me when I speak. If I ask him to do something he doesn't want to do, or if I enforce consequences - he huffs and slumps in his chair and is completely disrespectful. His father came with him to open house on Friday, and I tried to gently mention my concern about this attitude, but I honestly got a vibe that he did not care - in a way that seemed to go along with some Honduran mens' disregard for respecting women. That's hard to face when you come from the chivalry of the south. And through it all, I can't help but think, "This is why I don't teach middle school!"

So anyway... that's enough rambling on and on about all that. Just please pray for all of these kids and these situations. Pray that God will help me to love them unconditionally and that Satan would be powerless to hinder the work of the Lord in my class.

Things other than that have been pretty good. I feel like I've spent most of my hours outside of school working on school stuff. It's definitely kept me busy this week.

I'm becoming pretty good friends with a girl named Twana from Indiana. She's the new elementary art teacher, and we're the same age. I like her a lot, and I'm thankful for the developing friendship.

Today I went down into the city with the bus for the weekly grocery trip, and I also went down again this afternoon with Twana and her roommates to get pedicures. It felt a little adventurous. It wasn't really anything fancy, but it was also very affordable in comparison to the prices at home!

Some of us have even thrown out the idea of getting together in Chicago this summer - and if we plan it just right, I might actually get to go to a game at Wrigley! That would be so fun... :)

Tomorrow I'll be heading back to Impacto. The senior pastor is supposed to be back now from raising support in the States for a few months. Word on the street is his home church is Shades Mountain Baptist in Birmingham. I hope to confirm that tomorrow. :) They're also having lunch for us and matching us with families in the church in an adoption program similar to what I've seen before in college ministries. The last time I was adopted, it was by Mrs. Leigh Ann, and that has been one of the greatest blessings of my young adult life - so I hope this goes just as well.

Tonight was so much fun. I love how all of the new teachers bonded so quickly during new teacher orientation. We had a game night tonight, and I learned how to play two new card games. I think the first one was called 7 up, 7 down or something like that. I was terrible. haha. Pit was really fun but so frustrating when I kept getting the bear right at the last second. And of course, I'm a huge fan of Apples to Apples. It makes me think of lots of fun people that I've played it with in the past.

Oh, and last night we had pizza and watched a movie for Jenny's birthday. For future reference, The Soloist is really good.

I had a great conversation with a girl this morning about our thoughts about the amount of time we will be here. She put it best when she explained that if she doesn't stay for another year, it's not because of something here. It's just because of the things that are not here - like family and such. (Although Luke 14:25-33 is extremely convicting...) I think we're both looking at it from the same perspective. This is definitely hard. I know it's right and I know it's worth it. My emotions aren't overcoming my vision. But yet there are still many times when it would be nice to be home. Like the other day, I was doing fine - and then I talked to my dad on Skype for maybe a minute because I just wanted to hear his voice, and I couldn't control the tears. I felt a little blindsided. But most of the time, I'm busy and focused and just trying not to think about it.

And then there have been moments when I have thought about it and have wondered what I will go back to. It feels like starting over. No job. No commitments to a certain city or area. Very open.

Anyway, that's me... Always thinking about the future. But in the present, my life is here. And I'm glad it's a part of my story.

Here are some pictures from the city and from our pedicure adventure...

You should always make your bed

First of all, I'm sorry for posting about being sick and then not updating to let everyone know I'm feeling much better. I guess I just had some sort of short-lived bug or something... I was feeling exponentially better on Tuesday, and I felt like I just regained strength and energy all through the day.

Second of all, you should always make your bed because you never know when you'll steal chili with three friends and then run to hide with them to eat in the floor of your room. :)

Sorry about the spots in the pictures... My camera did something weird or had something on the lens. :(

One of our roommates made a huge pot of chicken chili tonight and was having her group of Honduran friends over again. They were supposed to be here around six, but of course - in true Honduran style, at 7:15 they were still not here and we were still waiting to eat. We were running out of time because we had to be at a birthday get-together at 7:30 - so we acted extremely silly and hid while we ate the contraband food - and then we even rinsed and hid our dishes to try to cover our tracks...

Oh, when you haven't actually been outside the school gate from Sunday morning until Thursday night - the craziest things are fun and entertaining. :)

I don't feel good.

I haven't been feeling well today. In fact, part of me thinks that is a bit of an understatement - but I don't want to be a drama queen. Another girl here and I woke up bright and early this morning with stomach trouble. Here in Central America, that is a frightening thing. The weird part is, neither of us had any more problems like those all day. Instead, we just began to feel extremely weak and achy. I may have had/have a fever, but I'm not sure because I don't have a thermometer or the magical motherhood ability to detect them.

So here I am - in bed, thankful for the help of Tylenol and wondering if it will be okay to eat something. All I've had today was a pack of eight plain Ritz crackers around 10:30. I really hope I feel better tomorrow because it is so hard to be a good teacher when all you want to do is lay down.

My students did pretty well today. We're really working on walking in an orderly and quiet line when we travel together around the school. I'm starting to wonder about the expectations held for their structure and behavior in their previous years of school. I felt a little bad for them because they spent the vast majority of their day looking up vocabulary words. It blows my mind how poor so many of their English speaking abilities are - so content that would have already been challenging to understand at Vincent becomes even harder because they don't even know the words. One girl even asked me today what the word "tired" meant - so terms like "vascular" in science and "descendant" in social studies are probably more than overwhelming.

We also had a little adventure this morning with two VERY large spiders crawling on the ceiling. One of them eventually came down the wall, and I tried to kill it, but I missed and it jumped into a basket. Then one of my brave girls threw it outside.

In a survey on the first day of school, many of my students indicated that they believe they are Christians, and some said they are "a little." However, when I asked them to tell what that means to them, I got a lot of answers that seemed very undeveloped or even works-based. I pray that the Lord will use this year to give them wisdom and understanding about what it really means to know Him and to have a relationship with Him.

My upstairs neighbors have become loud during the last few days... I'm tempted to grab a broom and pull a Mr. Heckles. haha...

To continue the list from a previous post about things that are different here:
- First of all... a correction. Dr. Pepper does exist here. We went to a store similar to Sam's and I found a case of 36 cans. In comparison to other drinks, it's a bit more expensive. At the grocery store, I can get a bottle of Pepsi or Fanta (similar to a 20 oz. but measured differently) for about $0.50 or less.
- All of the lightbulbs here are energy-saving and flourescent. It's annoying. I bought a lamp because the light in my room hurt my eyes, but then I couldn't find a lightbulb for it that served the purpose I was looking for. I finally found out that one of my roommates had some soft white lightbulbs left over from an old roommate a long time ago, but they didn't fit in the lamp. So I compromised and put that one in the overhead light fixture and settled for a flourescent lamp.
- Another interesting thing about the lights is the way they hesitate when you flip the switch to the on position. In my closet and my bathroom, it's a bit like a strobe-light as it blinks on and off for the first five seconds. The best is in my classroom, where it's almost like a guessing game just to see how many of the lights even try to come on when I flip the switch.

Rejoicing

"And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ." Philippians 1:6

Pictures!!!

And the first day of school picture for Kirsten and I... The two new fifth grade teachers: