No photos this week, sorry. I'll try to get some more next week so you can have faces to put with all of the names here. The week's been fairly long, I'm not sure I can remember where to start! Sunday church was as before, and I think I'm really going to enjoy services while I'm here. After church Krista and I went down to an ice cream shop and got helado! I'd missed the $1 for two scoops of ice cream in a sugar cone since returning home last summer.
Monday was the beginning of our new school system. I think this way is a lot more tiring, oddly enough. Breakfast is now at 8:00 rather than 8:30, so mornings are now a bit more rushed as I try to be out of the building by 7:20 rather than the old 7:30. School now begins at 9:30. The kids receive merits for punctuality, personal health habits, clean work, clean offices, being compassionate, following the rules/procedures, finishing a PACE, completing the day's goals, completing any homework if the day's goals weren't met, and maybe a few others that I can't recall! Students cannot leave their desks without permission unless they're checking their work. We have a flag system now, the Mexican flag is for any Spanish questions or to ask permission for something. I respond to the white flag, which will eventually become the Christian flag. Thus far I've kept busy walking from one side of the school to the other, then back to the first student, or I'll return to my desk to do violations that require English. In short, we keep busy in class! The nice thing about school, though, is that we now have a 15 minutes recreo/recess/break with a small snack and the kids get to run around behind the school or in the park. I think it's a nice break for everyone, and afterwards Julie reads for another 15 minutes so the kids can still spend time with her during school! School officially ends at 1:00 (or lunchtime) as far as PACE work is concerned. However, at 2:00 (or an hour after dismissal) I teach an English class to seven students, and sometimes we even have visitors (Ruth joined us yesterday). The class lasts about an hour and a half, and then on Tuesdays and Thursdays I have Kindergarten which starts around 4:00 (if we actually had a concrete schedule rather than living on Mexico time!) and ends at 6:00 (or dinnertime). I'm trying to take the time after dinner to hang with the kids, but sometimes I have violations that need done for the next day, so those get finished before play.
Enough about school. The evenings with the kids have been so much fun! Lolis (who's 15) has become a close friend, and we have a lot of fun messing around. My English class keeps trying to go on strike. Two stories have risen from them. Tuesday night I heard a lot of shouting and squealing. It was 8:30 or so, and the kids go to bed around 9:00. I thought, "Ok, well I can go have fun for the last few minutes before they go to bed." Bad idea. I go out, and it's my English students who are playing. Next thing I know, I'm surrounded and being tickled from all sides while Lolis holds me captive. Wednesday evening I had 4 or 5 of my students chasing me with branches shouting, "No more clase de ingles!" or "No more ing-leesh!" (which is about how "English" sounds when some of them say it.) On the branches were caterpillars, from what I understand, the caterpillars have spikes with a venom or something similar that makes your skin irritated and it makes you itch. So that night I got a good workout running laps around the house to avoid branches.
Long story short, the kids can be dangerous! We have a ton of fun, but I've definitely become the main target. Just wait until they find out about what they have to do after their English exam next week! We'll see if I make to the next blog entry...
My final anecdote/lesson: Don't let an 11 year old lead you on a hike. Last night Krista and I wanted to check out a part of the area where the kids play in the woods. While trying to track down a long sleeve shirt (I tend to take off sweaters and put my water down and then forget where the stuff is.), I saw Joel sitting alone in the school and asked if he wanted to join us. Well, a boy probably wouldn't want to walk with two girls talking constantly, not to mention we'd be speaking all English, so I asked Josiah if he'd like to come along as well. Somehow we ended up going to an entirely different area, beautiful, but not what Krista and I had planned on. Come time to turn around and go back, Josiah decided to take us back a different way. We found ourselves on the edge of a crop field, and Josiah jumped right into the patch, while the three of us stand watching. Eventually we made it back without any injuries, but not before blazing a trail through someone's field and climbing a stone wall. We also lost Josiah a couple of times.
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