the last while.

Life has been keeping me going in nine directions for the last while, so it's been difficult to give much of an update.  I mean, I still haven't finished updating you about my trip to Slovenia almost 2 months later.  I'll get right on that, I promise.

Despite not having updated for awhile, not a whole lot has changed.  I'm working more, which is great, but it also contributes to me being much busier.  Wouldn't it be great to get paid to do nothing sometimes?  I think I did that today.  Well, practically.  I got a call around 8:30 this morning to sub in the afternoon.  I decided 2 hours for $47.50 wasn't too bad, so I said yes.  Even if it was junior high.  When I arrived at 1:20, I found out that they were "Intervention" schedule, which meant that I had a 20 minute class where the students were supposed to read and write in their reading logs.  This sounded great in theory, except the ladies in the office gave me the wrong attendance sheet, so we spent about 10 of the 20 minutes figuring that all out.  Lovely.  I think the kids loved it though.  The next period was U.S. History (one of my personal favorite subjects).  Bonus: the Intervention schedule also meant that all of the class periods were shorter, so 7th period really seemed to fly by.  Last period of the day was called something like Sports Involvement and basically consisted of me taking 9 kids outside to either play basketball, work on their homework, or walk around the field.  Whew, tough day's work.

Last Saturday night was my mom's 35th high school reunion.  While she and my dad reunited with her classmates, I was home doing nothing.  Around 9:00 or so, I heard this loud weird noise, kind of like a really loud clicking sound.  I knew the only other living beings here were the dogs and cats, so I first thought it was one of them playing with something, throwing up, choking, etc.  You name it, it probably ran through my mind.  I cautiously went downstairs to investigate, only to find the lights on the refrigerator quickly flashing and the ice dispenser opening and closing (hence the noise).  I pushed all the buttons I could find, held them, tapped them, tried to find anything that would make it stop.  Nothing worked so I just went back upstairs and ignored the noise, which stopped a little while later.  Just before the parents got home, it started up again.  It was convenient, really, since it kept me from looking like I was crazy.  Dad pushed and poked at buttons just like me (nope, it still didn't work) and then decided to pull it out and unplug it to reset the thing.  Long story a little bit shorter, he plugged it back and nothing had changed.  Turns out the circuit board went out, which also eventually caused the refrigerator portion to stop cooling, but the freezer still worked.  Lovely.  The new refrigerator arrived yesterday afternoon.  It's so clean and pretty, my mom doesn't even want to load anything in to it :)  My dad did end up ordering the part to fiz the other fridge, which we can hopefully then sell.  Any takers?

Ok, I'm going to call it a night.  Even though it's Saturday, I still have to get up by 7:30 to go to a breakfast thing at church at 8:30.  My mom told me I didn't have to go until a bit later, but I decided that 8:30 sounded late as compared to the days I have to be at work at 7:20.  Amazing how "early" is relative! 

days six, seven, and eight: the work continues.

Tuesday was bound to be a busy day since we had an afternoon session scheduled (at 2, if I'm remembering correctly).  We had the typical morning session, only today we taught them about the Han people of China.  One of my favorite moments of the morning was watching the kids eat goldfish with chopsticks for their snack.  I must admit, most of them were pretty good.

 

As soon as the morning session was over, it was time for a little last-minute scavenger hunt planning between myself and two other team members.  We literally put the thing together in about an hour.  The theme was All-American Afternoon so a scavenger hunt was perfect.  We decided to use some of the extra t-shirts we had, pin a note to them, and then hide the shirts.  When the kids found each shirt, they had to read the note and then do what it said for a picture.  The kids had a great time.  Since I was partially in charge of the hunt, I had to run along with each of the three groups that we had.  Only problem: my foot was still hurting.  Nevertheless, I braved the pain and ran along for the sake of the kids.  They quickly got into the competitive spirit and we all had fun.  Besides, how else do you get kids to do silly things and take pictures?

Lie on the ground in a line

Hands on your hips

Do the crab walk

Switch shoes with another person



Do 10 push-ups

Sunset over Croatian coastline

Oh, and a rare moment from the morning:

Facing forward, quiet, listening to the story. A rare moment, indeed.



Exhausted from a busyTuesday, we knew Wednesday was going to be a longer, busier day.  We did the normal morning routine, today teaching the kids about the Fulani people of Africa (I don't remember which country...).  The craft for today was masks!









Wednesday afternoon much of the team met up and put together missionary gift bags of treats we had brought over from the U.S.  We took them mostly food items of things that they can't get where they live, like ranch dressing mix, taco seasoning, mac & cheese, cake mix, pudding mix, etc.  We also put the class pictures into frames for the kids to decorate the following day.  We had a quick break after we finished, then had dinner and prepped for our second movie night that night.  This time we showed Cars, along with a little skit interspersed in the movie to add more of a "message" to it.  The kids loved it!  By that night, I couldn't even sit down without feeling like I was going to fall asleep, so I became the unofficial bathroom runner with the kids.

And here's the view from my room's balcony that afternoon:



Thursday was our last day with the kids.  We had the typical morning session again and this was my day to teach about the Khamba people of Tibet.  I don't have any pictures from the day.  I think I was a) beyond tired by this point and b) was teaching, so I had more up-front time and less time to take pictures.  Thursday afternoon we had a closing program for the parents and we showed them a little bit of what we had done that week.  After they said their thanks and we said our good-byes, we still had one last event to put on: one last movie night.  It might seem like we should have been finished after a "closing program," but that's just the way it worked out in the schedule.  Our last movie night was Toy Story 3, again with a skit, which the kids also enjoyed.  There were many hugs and tearful good-byes that night as we parted ways with the kids one more time.  After the movie night, we had to finish cleaning up and packing our stuff.  Thankfully we had most everything already cleaned up before the afternoon program since we had to turn multiple rooms into one big room, so the clean-up that night was relatively simple.  We were still exhausted, though, so it felt like a lot! 

If you are still reading, good job hanging in there.  Still three more days to fill you in on...stay tuned!

day five: a great surprise.

Ok, back to the Slovenia update.
Let me tell you, this post has been a long time coming.

Day five (Monday morning) dawned as early as usual.  We had the same morning routine of getting up at 5:50, breakfast by 7, team devotions at 7:30, then off to our classrooms for last minute prep and starting our morning with the kids.  We taught them about the Rajput people of India. 



We did some really fun, but really messy sand art.  They loved it.

The sand art they were doing were those sticky papers where you pull small sections of the pattern off to decorate.  One little boy I was helping kept telling me, "Look! I got a BIG piece off this time!"  Yes, yes you did.  I think you may be missing the point...

The kids left us around noon and our team, instead of having an afternoon or an evening session to put on that day, had the rest of the day off.  What a nice surprise!  So, taking full advantage of that time, a group of 8 of us took a day trip to Trieste, Italy.  It was about 30 minutes by taxi, during which we had a very entertaining taxi driver, Emil.  He learned English mostly through music.  He also was a hippie at heart and played us a bunch of Beatles and other similar songs.  At one point, he got us to sing along.  It was very fun and very much entertaining.



On our way to Italy!

Emil first took us to a beautiful castle that sits right on the Adriatic:

Outer gate leading to the castle

You can see how it sits right on the water.  Also, please notice the Italian flag on the top :)



If you look carefully, you can see land across this body of water...it's Venice! So close, I could almost see it :)



Back to the City Center now...

Trieste Piazza

Piazza again

One of the streets we hung out on...pretty much everything was closed though...

We were very excited to find a pizzeria that was open!

And my pizza was delicious!

Gelato for dessert!

Again, delicious!

Walking back to the taxi.  It was absolutely freezing out and we were eating gelato...

The Piazza at night

I just really like this photo

This was out last stop of the night.  We were back in Slovenia and Emil took us to this shopping area.  It was an old street that apparently used to be all shoemakers.  It was fun to see, but pretty much all closed.  Also, Emil went to go grab some dinner and we couldn't find him when we were ready to go...

That was my fun, great surprise of a day.  It still is a bit unreal that I was able to take a day trip to Italy.  I can't wait to go back for real one day :)

the last week.

Well, March is here, which only means one thing to me: my birthday!  I turned 24 last Wednesday, but kicked off the celebration a bit early.  My actual birthday was pretty low-key.  Went to lunch with my mom and a friend, then dinner with my parents.  I got a flat screen TV and DVR for my room, but those didn't arrive until Friday.  My cousins from France arrived to our home on Friday (and have been here since) and we did a mini-party that night, too. 

Saturday morning I woke up feeling like I had (another!) cold.  Came on exactly the same way...woke up with a really sore throat.  We had breakfast that morning, I took a pretty long nap, woke up for lunch, went upstairs to get dressed to take the kids bowling.  As soon as I got to my bathroom, I felt extremely dizzy and feverish and barely made it to my bed.  I proceeded to spend the entire rest of the day in bed, sleeping for much of it, only getting up to go to the restroom.  It was not so fun.  Sunday I felt a bit better as far as my body being tired and feverish, but I don't think my throat has ever been as sore as it was that day.  It was like swallowing fire everytime I swallowed.  It was excruciating to swallow, but even worse (what's worse than excruciating?) if I didn't swallow for awhile and my throat got dry.  I missed out on more family time as I laid in bed through most of the evening, again with a fever.

Monday I was doing much better in the fever department, and my throat was better, too, but I was afraid it would hit me later in the day like it had the last two days.  So, rather than drive down to school, my professor told me I could join in via webcam.  Only it didn't work as planned and I missed class.  Not a whole lot I could do about it, but a bit disappointing.  Oh well...

Tomorrow I am absolutely thrilled to be headed back to subbing in junior high.  The more I sub in junior high, the more it is confirmed in me that I was never meant to be a junior high  teacher.  I may get paid $5 more, but I really don't think it is worth it (plus it's another whole hour of work for only $5).  Oh, well, it's work, right? 

In other news, job applications are in the works still.  Please keep praying as I submit them in the next week or so.