Wednesday, August 22, 2007

This morning we got to school around 8:45 instead of before 8. There was what one might call a “traffic jam” on the last hill up to the school because of all the mud from the rain. The busses wouldn’t go up full of kids for fear of fishtailing into someone’s corn field, or worse yet, a parent’s car, so we waited in the bus for about 45 minutes. One bus let all the passengers out and they had to walk up the hill, some little preschoolers with backpacks bigger than them. Our buss driver, the same from last year, is the best, and he waited until everyone was cleared out, almost, and then sped his fastest and let us out at our normal drop off in front of the school. I white-knuckled it and closed my eyes because I could feel the bus skidding. One of the new teachers turned to me if this was normal. “Well”, I said. “It’s not normal to have to wait like this because of mud, but it is normal in the fact that something exciting is happening the majority of the time like this.”
For instance, it’s not normal to have ugly, skinny, mangy, dirty, stray dogs running around a school, but today I saw one of my petite first grade girls run one off from the playground.
Today was very hectic at times. We don’t have our completed schedules yet, so I was with one class the whole time instead of rotating to the other first grade. I’m not really able to teach much yet. All of the students have to bring all of their own supplies, including things like a hand towel, toilet paper, soap, toothpaste and a toothbrush. I have to go through a list of what seems like 1,000 things and check off for all 20 or so students that they brought it all. Some of them don’t even know what some things are when I say it in Spanish, so I have to go through their bags and help them. Meanwhile the boys are playing sword fights with their rolled up poster paper and no one can hear me asking them to put their supplies in a certain place, etc. Tomorrow I will have more help and maybe get to rotate to the other room. I seem to have some mighty challenging students. I was going crazy so they got to play a lot today. I just couldn’t finish checking the supply list even though I just wanted to get it over with.

Please continue to pray for all of us as Hepatitis A is going around. Today a family owned pharmacy brought in someone to give injections to anyone who wanted them, so I got one. Mr. Ken is doing a little better but has beeen suffering with back pain and is slow to get better. Thanks.