¿una tormenta?

This week in six words…

Eager students must bear unwell teacher.  (Sounds a bit like a boring news headline, doesn’t it?)

Monday morning was the beginning of serious school this year.  I was pleasantly surprised by the positive attitudes of my teenage boys.  Kevin is ready and excited to learn a lot this year.  He has a goal of graduating in two years.  Kristian is happy to be in the high school class for the first time.  So far, his behavior is helping him to earn his stay here.  Pray that these attitudes last for longer than a week!

Unfortunately I’ve been battling a headache all week.  Thankfully my students and fellow teachers have graciously put up with my lack of energy and lackluster attitude.  Hope this discomfort will soon subside. 

On a brighter note, we’re expecting a storm today!  It’s not yet a hurricane, but who knows what Irene will be by the time she reaches Luquillo.  In light of this impending weather, we had an abbreviated church service so that people could get home to batten down the hatches. 

This could be my first big storm here.  We’ve got plenty of candles, matches, and cans of soup.  I’m getting all my computer work and copying done today in case we have no power for a while.  Last time we had this much hype for a storm was Hurricane Earl last year.  But I didn’t even have to close my windows for that one!

una nueva comienza

I'm back to blogging!  Sorry for my long break...

We did it!  We made it through our first week of school.  A group from my church came to work and put on their Vacation Bible School program for our school kickoff.  They cut our grass, planted things, cleaned things, taught things, and played things.  We went to the beach and the rain forest.  We enjoyed having them with us.  I know the kids had a blast!  These pictures are evidence of that:

 The girls on both ends are new this year.  They live on the other side of the island.  Please pray for transportation solutions and for time spent learning at home.

 Our dreams of a pergola are slowly coming to fruition!

 Kevin, Kioney, and I are singing on Main Street.

 Everyone's favorite game this week was drip...drip...drop!

 This is our junior missionary for the semester--Chris.  We welcome his energy and are glad to have a new hero for our little boys.
 

But now the fun and games are over.  I commented to Judy last week as we were joking and laughing with our students, “It’s a shame we have to be mean to them next week!”

el capitán

Today my family and I went to the Yankee game.  We bought the tickets months ago, anticipating just a nice family outing. 

Little did we know that we would witness history!  We saw Derek Jeter get his 2,999^th— 3,000^th —3,001^st —3,002^nd —and 3,003^rd hits! 

What a game—maybe the highlight of my summer?  Congratulations Derek!

las conferencias

 

Last week, Jen and I had the privilege of visiting our nation’s capital.  We were mostly there on business—but we made sure to do some sightseeing, too.  We stayed with a family in Virginia that used to go to my church.  I had a great time with them and look forward to doing it again some time.

 We attended the National Outreach Conference at Gallaudet University which included a day at Maryland School for the Deaf.  This was an interesting experience.  It was not the perfect fit for us, and we were immediately deemed the “green horns” of the group, but we learned a lot.  Since I have no knowledge of how deaf education works in the states, it was enlightening to find out the strengths and weaknesses of schools around the country.  We found that even though we are a small Christian school in Puerto Rico, we share some of the same struggles as the state schools for the deaf.  Also, the conference provided many opportunities for us to take in new ASL vocabulary.  

And that was all the work we were going to do on this trip—or so we thought.  Right before we flew in, the family we were staying with informed us that there was a conference for the deaf at a church right by their house.  They asked if we were attending—we hadn’t planned on it, but we couldn’t resist.  The conference was taking place the week we were there, and it was a Christian conference.  This was more up our alley than the first one.  

 

We planned to go for only one day.  Jen and I chose to attend two workshops about ASL skills development, but the teacher gave a preview for the following day’s class about ASL phrases.  We knew we had to be there for that, so we delayed our sightseeing plans.  We’re glad we did; we learned a lot of useful vocabulary.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to impress my students with my new signs this August.  

Now to the fun part…sightseeing!  Even though I’ve been to Washington D.C. many times, I’ve never gone at an age where I appreciated the history and museums.  This time, I felt like a kid in an amusement park.  We spent two days traveling all around the city—joined by my college roommate Sam.  We covered a lot of ground: National Postal Museum, National Art Gallery, International Spy Museum, Ford's Theatre, American History Museum, Air and Space Museum, Arlington National Cemetery, Old Post Office, and most of the monuments—Washington, Lincoln, World War Two, Vietnam War, Korean War, Jefferson, FDR, and we were able to see the Martin Luther King Jr. monument that is still being built!       

We had a great trip.  Our feet hurt, our brains hurt, but our faces were smiling the whole time. 

Next stop...

 

mi cumpleaños

I wasn’t looking forward to being away from family and friends on my birthday, but my Puerto Rican family helped to make up for that.

This morning, after a happy birthday phone call from my brother, I was greeted by Happy Birthday decals on the windows of my car (actually Betsy’s car) as I was headed to church.  That small surprise meant a lot to me, and I began my day with a smile.

I tried not to tell anyone at church that it was my birthday because they make you come up on stage and they sing to you.  (Then you have to awkwardly stand there, not knowing if you should sing to yourself or just clap your hands and smile.)  But Jen made sure that they knew it was my birthday.  I guess I’m glad she did!  I got many birthday greetings and blessings.  I even received a few unexpected gifts from some of the kids in my sign language class. 

When it was time for the people with birthdays and anniversaries to stand on stage, I was the only one to go forward—great!  To my surprise, the worship leader immediately asked Hector to pray for me, and before I knew it I was shaking hands with the pastor and returning to my pew—no song!  As soon as I sat down though, the worship leader said, “We forgot to sing!”  So they did in fact sing to me, but I didn’t have to stand awkwardly on stage.  God is good!

Then a Father's Day Skype with my dad, presents—including shoes and a birthday-party-in-a-box, and lunch with friends at a Mexican (well, Puerto Rican-Mexican) restaurant.  This was followed by a beach walk and a chocolate-coffee ice cream cone at my favorite little shop in town.  We met a few friends there and chatted. 

Then home—birthday phone calls, a movie, and a fire in the chimenea.  When we got the fire to shoot out the top, it looked like a giant birthday candle.  

Thank you to everyone who made my first Puerto Rican birthday so special!

el verano

A number of people have asked us recently, “What exactly are you doing now that school is out?  Are you on vacation at the beach every day?”…We wish!

At the start of the summer, Jen and I made a list of all the things we wanted to do before leaving the island at the end of June.  Much to our delight (and perhaps to our surprise) we’ve almost crossed everything off. 

Here’s an idea of an average day for me:

I wake up early to exercise before it is blazingly hot.  Then I eat breakfast and do my devotions.  Then I go down to my classroom to work.  (I’ve made a long list of classroom tasks—of which I am nowhere near finished!)  I break for a quick lunch, and then I get back to work.  In the afternoon, Jen and I may do office work, run errands, make phone calls, or do some other school business.  Then dinner, practice the piano, watch a movie, read, and bed.

That’s just an average day.  Sometimes we have added excitement like we did today.  We had a group of Girl Scouts come work at the school for a few hours this morning.  They had saved their cookie money for seven years to take this trip, but they wanted to make sure that they included some service work.  So we put them to work!  They painted, sorted food, and did yard work.  We enjoyed spending the morning with them.  They did a week’s worth of school chores in a matter of hours!

 

One of the nice things about summer is that I get the chance to do things that I don’t have time or energy for during the school year.  During the past two weeks, in addition to working around the school, I have been able to do some sewing and painting.  I better soak up this artistic time now to hold me over until next summer!

So, we’re not really on vacation yet, but hopefully soon.  The harder we work now, the more time we can enjoy with friends and family while we’re away.  We have one more week in PR.  Then it’s on to DC!