la Navidad

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

el Adviento

This week...

...we decorated the chapel for Christmas...

...we began the season of Advent with lessons about hope and peace...

 ...we hung out with a group of interpreting students from Ohio...

  

...we learned Christmas songs together...

...they helped us with our school work...

...and, possibly, my favorite thing that happened this week--drumroll please--I got a new LCD projector for my classroom (thanks to goodsearch.com money), and my two new donated computers are finally up and running!  Now all of my students can use computers in our room at the same time! 

 

Don't they look happy!

los tres cerditos

 

This week, my class read The Three Little Pigs to the little kids.  Johanely was absent, so Kristian and Larimar filled in.

Then, of course, the little kids had a chance to tell us the story.

acción de gracias

It's hard to be away from family on Thanksgiving. (Thanks to Skype, though, I was able to sit with them around the dining room table!)  

Even though I wasn't near my real family, I was able to spend the day with some of the people who are quickly becoming like family to me.  Equipped with chairs, books, sunglasses and a cooler full of turkey sandwiches,  we headed to the second best place to spend Thanksgiving...the beach!

We spent the long weekend with some lovely visitors from Missouri with whom we ate a lot of ice cream and laughed almost nonstop!  We went to a town fair, did a little Christmas shopping in San Juan, and visited a gallery of local artists at the rain forest.  

Not a bad way to spend a weekend...but by Monday morning, we were all pretty exhausted!

una cuenta

Every Friday, my students read a book to the pre-k/kindergarten class. This is often my favorite time of the week.

This past Friday, they read a book about a scavenger hunt and then planned one for the little kids. To my dismay, my students were really dragging that morning. They lethargically stood up in front of the little kids to being reading. (I thought it was going to be impossible for them to keep the kids’ attention.) Then, all of a sudden, they spun around so we could not see their faces. They appeared to be scheming. Then next thing we knew, they jumped and spun back around with grinning, excited faces. (Sometimes I really love them!)

After the story---the hunt began!

You can almost feel their excitement, can't you?

Saúl is searching really hard for the next clue!

When they had found the last clue and eaten the prize, they decided to work together to create a scavenger hunt for Kristian and Judy.

After all that fun we enjoyed a lovely Thanksgiving dinner with the ladies from Palmas Community Church.  It was the first of what will be at least 5 Thanksgivings that we'll have.

On Saturday, Jen and I were geared up to do a 5K (my first ever) at Parque Central in San Juan.  It was a beautiful day.  Sunny and clear, warm and breezy.  We punched the race address into Garmin, and an hour later we arrived at our destination: Parque Central...de los Niños.  We quickly realized that this was not the Parque Central that we wanted--this was a kid's park!  After driving around searching for some other central park in the city, the start time for the race came and went.  So what were we to do but got out for Chinese food?

My first 5K was so easy--maybe next time I'll do a 10K!

la suerte

Some days my kids drive me crazy and I wonder what I'm doing in a room of teenagers.

But on days like today--when I spent the majority of my afternoon laughing and singing with my students--I consider myself very lucky to call this my job!

gracias

Here's another reason I love my job:

This morning my kids were in some kind of funk. I could see it in their faces that it was going to be a rough day. So after chapel, I jokingly said to Betsy (the teacher in the room next to me--and the principal), "Let's switch kids today."

And she said, "Okay!"

A half-hour later when I returned to my class, my children were sitting quietly with smiles on their faces and with their vocabulary notebooks open and ready on their desks.

So, this post is for you, Betsy. Thank you for coming to my rescue in a moment of desperation, for lending me your sweet and smiling children, and most of all--for straightening out my hormonal teenagers so that we could have a smooth day.