Capitulo Diez: Poco a Poco

The Lord is righteous in all his ways
and loving toward all he has made.
The lord is near to all who call on him,
to all who call on him in truth.
He fulfills the desires of those who fear him;
he hears their cry and saves them.
Ps. 145: 17-19

Happy New Year! After an INCREDIBLE time with my beloved ones in Washington, I am back in full swing again. It was so hard to leave home but after the initial ache of leaving has subsided I find myself in a beautiful country with awesome people doing good, satisfying, hard work again. and I like it more than I remembered.
The best surprise to which I returned is that I really do love my students and I like to be a teacher. Yay. :) I had forgotten that. They are so strange. Today ALL my boys randomly decided to "hug" Miss Cole. It was sudden and overwhelming, like being compressed by a mini football team. I couldn't stop laughing at their deadlock tactic, successfully delaying class just a little longer.
I've been realizing that I have some room to grow in teaching cross-culturally. My students love, love, LOVE to talk and in December I was pulling out my hair trying to get them to listen for one second. I'm trying now to shift my focus from getting them to listen to getting them to talk about the right things. Stopping them is like standing in front of a train with my hands out and I come home feeling like... errr. a train wreck. ;) But redirecting them might just work if I can master the art. who knows? I came home smiling today.
Prayer requests:
--> good ideas and teaching skills to make class fun and learning happen
--> a joyful thankful trusting spirit to sustain me
--> wisdom for next year (Should I look for an opportunity to learn Spanish and live with Latinos OR focus on becoming a good teacher and stay here?)

Capitulo Nueve: Sanidad

You know that feeling you get when you've been sick for weeks and all of a sudden you wake up healthy? You forgot how exhilarating it is to breathe out of both nostrils, to taste your food, let the bright sunshine back in, and your body just tingles with life and vitality. That is what today and yesterday have been for me. Not physically but in my head and my classroom. After a couple of miserable weeks we're back to happy and suddenly I can laugh at my ridiculous students, I can see the beautiful in the world, I can feel like a good teacher again, and most importantly of ALL- I can write in my blog. ;)


The weeks have been really hard for a variety of reasons. Bullying is the main one. More than one of my students are instigators and the followers feed off them. Then the perpetrator's parents see their angel getting victimized and jump in the scuffle and we all come out bloody. I haven't developed thick skin yet so I take everything personally: parent comments, bad grades, black eyes, cold weather- you name it- it's my fault. So this is what it's like to be a mom! All that to say that things are looking up. The sun has come out literally and figuratively, and for the time being, there is peace and harmony in the classroom.

One of my precious friends left part of Ps 121 taped to my classroom door this week.

I lift my eyes up unto the mountains; from where shall my help come?

My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth.

He will not allow your foot to slip;

He who keeps you will not slumber.

The LORD is your keeper,

the LORD is your shade at your right hand.

The sun will not smite you by day, nor the moon by night. The LORD will protect you from all evil;

He will keep your soul.

I know so much more fully that I am inadequate for the task. I cannot guard the 21 souls entrusted to my care. I cannot even guard my own. I am vulnerable and in the dark.  But God is my keeper.
He guards our souls and leads us through the valley and gives what we need for each day and then one blessed day he lets us step into the sun and whew the sun is ten times more beautiful than it used to be.


There are my ramblings for the day.

Thanksgiving is next week and I'm trying to decide between going to an island in the Caribbean or staying here to get ahead on class work. :) At least I'm pretending to ponder the matter.

My students are more bizarre every day and when I'm not pulling out fistfuls of my hair I'm laughing really hard at them. Today one of my students cut eye holes in his nylon book cover and slipped it over his head in the middle of reading. He acted perfectly natural with the mask pulled over his head and sticking up on the sides like antenna on a weird little alien. Needless to say the quiet was broken, never to be recovered- but what can you do?
30 more days until I'm home!!! whoot. Maybe I'll make a paper chain out of the tests I'm supposed to be grading. mwa ha!

Here are some prayer requests until then:

• Wisdom with parents. That I won't fear them, but will be able to calmly present evidence and be Christ- like and sturdy.

• Wisdom with students. To know their hearts, if they are telling the truth, how to best discipline and instruct in righteousness.

• Spiritual vision and faith for me, and biblical integration in every area in the classroom.

Thank you SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much for praying.

Chapter 8: Habla no Mas

October 21,2010
Oh my how long it has been since last I wrote. How will I ever summarize it all? This may last all night guys.
Hmmm... Okay my soup needs to simmer for half of an hour. When it's done then I post the blog- errors and all. good plan?
Today was the last day of the Quarter and it was a good exclamation point to wrap it up. I woke up with no voice- or rather, the voice of a teeny tiny squeaky donkey. It was very amusing for the first part of the day and I enjoyed singing worship songs with my mind instead of just my mouth and I enjoyed the student's sympathetic compliance. After a while though, they got bored with being good and started exploiting the situation. My attempts at teaching became more and more pathetic and my head and throat started throbbing and my eyes gazed with longing at the clock. Come on 2:45! But my smile returned as I walked home with Jesus and he said I didn't have to talk anymore I could just listen and I didn't have to teach anymore I could just be learn from Him. *sigh* It's nice to just be the kid in this relationship.
The quarter has been a whirlwind. Days fly by. I have learned so much about being a teacher and I have learned that so much has yet to be learned. My students are much naughtier than they were at first but I'm really starting to love them I think. Today in Science my student said that a dog that was not a mix is called a Puritan... which is what we're learning about in Social Studies... so I guess he's learning stuff... and that's good...
 So last weekend I went to Amapala with three of my best friends and it was INCREDIBLE. My only desire was to get a sunburn and I got that and sooo much more. I got to ride in a taxi, a school bus, a chicken bus (standing up squished body to body, always packing in more), a boat, a tuktuk (basically the only mode of transportation on the island), a kayak, and on the back of a truck (three hour return trip with random strangers through pounding sun and pouring rain.)
Amapala is a tiny island, south of Honduras. From the beach you can see Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Honduras in all three directions. The center of the island is a volcano and around in are cobblestone streets on which little tuktuks buzz. I think it's 17 miles around the whole island and on one side is a view of the ocean and the other side is the volcano. Amapala is so strange because it's like tropical paradise and yet the people are dirt poor because the island has strangely been left unexploited and obscure. So needless to say, we had the time of our lives and drank up the equatorial sun and black sand and free seashells like only pasty little teachers who live in a cloud can do.

Uh oh it's 6:01 and my soup tells me it is tired of having a meaningless existance. Alas, I must leave.

Praises
My lovely sunburn that keeps me warm on cold days
My lovely rotten students and a good blessed quarter.

Prayer requests:
1. That I am able to revamp my schedule so that both me personally and my students spend time in a way that is more profitable spiritually. Ie: Bible class, personal devos, memorization aren't just part of a checklist.
2. Parent teacher conferences next week! Eeek!
3. This weekend I'm going to a women's retreat with my church and I'm a little nervous because I want to get to know people but I am tired and Spanish is hard and I have no voice.

PS I'm praying that God will hugely bless those who are praying for me so- Double your efforts folks!!! ;)

I love and miss you all to smithereens.

Capitulo Siete: llovizna con gozo

Sept. 23
wheeeeeeeeeeeeew. today has been one of those weeks. There is a cat screaming somewhere in the darkness outside my window tonight. I write to you with elbows propped on piles of papers to grade. My students have suddenly found ways of multiplying themselves and becoming much muchier lately. Their energy is new every morning. Today there were several fights, tears, yelling, and two kids that missed the bus. My principal found next week's plan book looking quite blank. Progress reports were due today and in retrospect I'm wondering if I've been grading too hard. I fear I will have 42 parents at my door Monday morning. Oh my.
The good news is that tomorrow there are no students and the teachers are attending an ACSI conference. I get to sleep in until 6:30 and just sit back and play student all day. yay.

Sept 26
Things are better now. :) I had a weekend to fold the clothes that had been vomited from my drawers and clean up the mess in my head. God has refreshed my spirit. My week of non-success has reminded me that- I'm not exactly awesome but being awesome is God's job. My job is to gape and glory and enjoy His awesomeness. (Ps. 50:23) so- bring on the Monday!

Well, hurricane Matthew didn't do the damage we had expected. But all weekend has been cold and drizzly and we have been living in a cloud. and now I must get back to work. Thank you so much for those of you who have been praying for me! me extraño todos de ustedes con fuerte.

Capitulo Cinco: Un mes!

September 5th
Today is my one month anniversary with my beloved Honduras. Every day together has been new and strange and surprising and captivating and irreplaceable. This evening I spent some time working in my classroom and when I finished I sat outside on the balcony. It was dark and the sky was all cloudy and dark pink in spots. Occasionally distant lightening would light up the sky and change the whole color scheme for a second. The weather was perfect and I just sat there and soaked up the luxury. It is luxury to be alone with your best Friend on a night like tonight and just forget everything but His steadfast love.
Well this week flew by. Nothing too eventful to report in the classroom. I finally found a line that works! I've been fighting with my students since day 1 to walk in straight lines, so on Friday when they finally succeeded I almost cried. I've had a chest cold all week so I've barely had a voice...

September 12th
I was meaning to finish this last week and now it's almost next week. How did that happen? Time is picking up speed and all I can remember to write about is a blurring colorful smear of events. My chest cold is persistent and muy guacala but I am still fully functional. I am eagerly anticipating the sweet relief that follows the occasion when I hack up one of my lungs.
We celebrated "Day of the Child" on Friday. It was everything you can imagine and more. This week we will be celebrating Independence Day on Tuesday (assembly, parade, parties, mayhem) and we'll have the day off on Wednesday.
My roof now has a leak that is perfectly situated above my desk. I was horrified at first but now I kind of like it because it makes me feel like I live in a foreign country. My kids are fantastic. Have I mentioned that yet? As a whole they love art, hate reading, they're ridiculously good at soccer, terrified of thunder, and they talk incessantly. Reading my students' papers is always an adventure due to their unintentional English language learner humor.
Well... tomorrow's Monday so I'm afraid I can't be loquacious tonight. All is well here. I am gaining some incredible friends and intensely missing some incredible friends. Thanks for the prayers. I live off of them. Please pray that I will know how to build friendships with parents and communicate well and that I would be focused on bringing God glory and not get disracted with peripheral things. Haggai 1:5-9

Capitulo Cuatro: My Good Teacher

So yesterday I went grocery shopping and bought coated paperclips (the humidity makes things rust) and deodorant (the humidity makes things stinky) and a spray bottle (the humidity creates hopeless frizz) and my favorite platano chips and milk in a box and these round things that I'm currently eating with my coffee (a cross between chipitas and graham crackers) and... well maybe you are thinking that a shopping list is not momentous enough to be bloggable? Ahem. Then I went to my classroom to work on lesson planning and getting things ready for my 21st student to finally arrive on Monday. She’s been on vacation in Europe so now we’ll have to catch her up on everything that’s been taught the last week of school.


Today (Sunday) definitely made it to the “Top 3 Best Days in Honduras” list. I was going to go to a Calvary Chapel with a friend. But then more and more people wanted to go and so it ended up being about 12 of us- except that my friend got sick so we went without her and none of us knew the exact location of the church. So down the mountain we rode the rapidito that ironically was going about 5-10 mph. At the bottom we managed to miraculously stumble into the church and we weren’t even late! Many aspects of the church were very inviting. 1) The pastor was a North American so he spoke marvelously clear Spanish (and he had a beard!) 2) The church was tiny but full so we made up 1/3 of the congregation many who had no seats. 3) The worship was lovely and it was new songs with good words and no wailing lady flailing about. 4) The preaching was solid. All of these things were good signs and so I’m hoping I can stop church hopping and settle down.

Afterwards the group went back to the rapidito stop but Julie, Rachel, and I went to a coffee shop and then a plaza to wait for a lady named Jenny to pick us up. She took us to a place called Valle de los Angeles which is beautiful and touristy but thankfully we only ran into a couple of tourists. We ate incredible food for lunch and then walked around and I bought a Honduran soccer shirt and a sweet hammock. It was so relaxing to be with some of my favorite people and just not be a teacher for a day.

It's been a long week. The honeymoon is over with my kids. Of course I’m still madly in love but… it’s a lot of work. I haven’t gotten used to leaving my productivity switch on from 5:30am-10:30pm Monday through Friday. It's ridiculous how much time I spend outside of class just doing prep. But such is the life of a teacher and I still can’t imagine a better teaching job. I got to meet all the parents on Friday and practice my Spanish a lot. They are so supportive and personable. I left with my face smelling like someone else’s face because of all the heavily perfumed kisses planted on my cheek.

One last thing.

One thing that drives me crazy as a teacher is that I want so badly to be friends with my kids but I really can’t unless they have a healthy “fear” of the classroom rules and me their teacher. Let me explain. They must be afraid of the consequences for breaking rules or fearful of my displeasure, in order to obey the rules that make class function smoothly so we can have fun and I can enjoy my students. No matter how much I like my students, I can’t play games with them if they get out of control and I can’t even teach them if they aren’t following rules. We just spend all of our time practicing walking in straight lines and never get to actually do the fun and exciting things I have planned.

Is that like the fear of God? Maybe it’s the same with Him, our good Teacher. He most definitely can be our friend, our best and closest friend. But that friendship can’t function if we don’t fear Him enough to obey Him and follow His rules. In Psalm 25 there’s this crazy verse that says, “the friendship of the Lord is for those who fear Him.” Yes, God longs to be our friend the way I long to be friends with each of my kids, but they have to respect and obey me as their teacher first. It also says, “Who is the man who fears the Lord? Him will he instruct in the way that he should choose.” I want to learn from Him but it’s the fear of the Lord that is the beginning of knowledge. So I want to be like Monolo who’s eyes fill with tears when he thinks his teacher is displeased or like Sergio who sits in the back of the room and yet his eyes are always fixed on the teacher and his hand is the first to shoot up. I want to learn to walk in straight lines so that I can get to the good stuff.

Whew this is long!! :) I'm done now. Please pray for me that I’ll be a good teacher. Thank you!

Capitulo Tres: Muy Contenta

It is Saturday and I have so much to write but so little time. Therefore please be merciful and understanding about the spelling and grammar errors. Thursday and Friday were our first school days and they were just 1/2 days. The first day crept up so fast that I was hardly prepared and started my mornings lacking basic human necessities such as breakfast, sleep, and clean hair. But God was merciful and my kids are gems. No doubt about it. I am getting spoiled. Unlike gringos, honduran 5th graders are super cute with their big black eyes and lovely skin- even wearing their green tablecloth uniforms they are adorable.
My kids are so sweet and respectful and they all call me "Mees." I'm working on getting them to call me "Mees Cole," but that's going to take time. I wish I had time to write about each of the funny personalities in my class. But all of them are sweet and want my approval and their 4th grade teacher said that's just how they are. After my student teaching experience I feel like my children are angels and my bright, breezy classroom is heaven.
My classroom is muy bonita. I really wish I would have taken a "before" picture so you could see all the blank paint-chipped walls and the furniture in a pile on the floor covered with plastic. Now it's very happy.
The first day of school I made a KWL chart about Miss Cole and the students were trying to think of what they knew about me. One of the kids said "I know you lav Jesus." And I said, "How do you know?" and he said "because you came here and you are teaching us etc." and it was so freeing to just say "Why, yes. Yes I do love Jesus very much." And when explaining the rules I got to read them Psalm 16 about how David said, "Surely your boundaries have fallen for me in pleasant places." We talked about how rules and boundaries are good and  if we didn't have boundaries for a soccer game what would happen? Yes, in his path their is fullness of joy. It's just the best thing ever to be able to start our day with prayer and to not have to surpress/ water down the main ingredient of my life.
Am I rambling? All that to say I love teaching so far.
Last night we went to a loooooong meeting about culture shock and I almost died because I so deperately wanted a shower and a full night's sleep and I have sooo much lesson planning to do. But the 20 min walk home made it worthwhile. It had just rained massively and the night was gorgeous.  I was wearing my favorite dress shoes and rolled up slacks so hopping over puddles and sticking in the mud was particularly charming. really. :) We passed a giant castle on the way cause some rich guy went to Europe and decided he needed his own castle in Honduras. and we passed a field full of bull frogs that sounded crazy, like ducks/car horns. 
Then this morning we left for the market at 6:30 and it was AWESOME. It was all these booths with fresh produce and etc and ahhhh I was in heaven. I bought tons of fruit to make smoothies and ingredients for my maid to make enchiladas (not like Mexican style) and carne asada, and I bought the first of many exotic plants to put in my house. There were also lots of booths with all kinds of strange juices and comida tipica de Honduras.
 My new favorite kind of chips is green salsa flavored plantane chips. oh man. What else? Oh, on Friday the building I was in got struck by lightening. It was SO loud and bright and everyone just stopped and staired at eachother wide-eyed. I guess the computers upstairs were fried but nobody died. Weeeell that's all for now. Time for a large mug of coffee and some intense lesson planning.