Too Blessed to be Stressed

Hola mis amigos!

How about an update on the past couple of days :) 

Wednesday we started with the normal bus ride routine, until we got a little up the mountain and were stopped by a big truck stuck in the mud.  Now, the road to school is big enough for one vehicle to drive on, so passing this truck wasn't an option.  They recently have been working on fixing our road to school (praise the Lord!) and now when it rains, it get muddy really easily, making it difficult to sometimes get up the mountain.  Our teacher van was the first to get stuck waiting behind the truck, and then slowly all the other buses of teachers and students filed behind us.  We waited for almost 2 hours as the administration debated on how to get us up the mountain so that we could have school.  They decided to have our bus try and go through a farm to pass the truck.  After the farmer got all of the cows out of the way, we began going quickly through the muddy fields, only to get stuck in that muddy field ourselves.  They tried to have a truck pull us forward more, but naturally, it didn't work.  Finally, they decided that we had tried all options, and canceled school.  Our bus slowly backed through the field, and then we made our way back down the mountain, passing each bus filled with cheering and clapping students...and teachers :)! 

Well, Kiley and I still felt really unorganized and not prepared for the rest of the week, so we decided to still go to school, and we walked all the way up the mountain to school.  It was a 50 minute hike up the mountain in the heat.  Lets just say when I took my backpack off, it still looked like I had a backpack on, and the next day I felt like I had buns of steel!

Thursday and Friday school days were normal.  I started using "google translate" for things that I want to say/tell to my assistants each day, and read them off my paper to them.  This worked better than my charades and pointing experiences I think!  My students (some of them) are picking up at least 2 or 3 colors we have been learning (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, and black) and I cannot explain the feeling I got when more than one of them remembered even one of them from the previous day.  IT WAS PURE JOY.  They ARE learning!!!!!--and they may not know a lot that I am saying, and they may not remember all that I teach them, but that is alright by me! 

They are so cute when I ask them to repeat a few words after me too.  They usually get the first word pronounced right, but then it just sounds like a bunch of gibberish.  It is adorable, and I have to try really hard hard not to laugh because it's just too funny!! So, I've decided:  the fun things I plan might not be as fun as they would be if the kids understood what was going on, but I can still try my best.  And my best is what I will give every day!  Besides, I live in a beautiful city, I work at a beautiful school on a mountain, I get to love on cute children each day, and I have a great group of new friends to share my experience with.  Our God is an awesome God, and I am WAY too blessed to be stressed!!

Yesterday early evening the power went off (the city shuts off the power at random times for different time periods) and didn't come on again until today around 1pm.  So we were without electricity and water for that time.  We were told not to eat meat from anywhere for a week if the power goes off for a decent amount of time, because you don't know where that meat came from or how long it has been unrefrigerated/unfrozen.  Nice to know!  So with the power out last night, Jen Kiley and I played cards in our house by candlelight for awhile, and then we went to the other girls' house and we had a fire and all hung out.  It was nice to not be lesson planning for awhile!  That's what Sunday will be for I suppose.