Mad :-/

Today was typical Monday style...5 year olds forgetting everything we learned last week about sitting in desks and being quiet in the halls :). But we made it through and did okay. I was so mad today though. Okay, maybe not mad, but I was so upset with my class today. They were all hyper all day and at some points a little disrespectful, so we had been working on that. But THEN, one little boy grabbed my hand and told me that I needed to see something in the boy's bathroom. I walked in and I realized that someone had been to lazy to lift up the toilet cover and had just relieved themselves all over everything. lol I called them all in the bathroom and I was just going to town being really dramatic over how big of a deal it was. Then I called in mi amor (my love), Dona Isa, who is our janitor and she started ranting in Spanish to them. It was quite the show. I was really frustrated that had happened, but I almost had a hard time keeping up a straight face for such a long, dramatic incident. No one ever fessed up, but I think we instilled the fear of God in them :) LOL. The rest of the day was good. We had bball practice and the lights went out in the middle of it. That's always fun. Then it was raining so hard that the roof kept leaking so kids were just absolutely wiping out. Fun stuff. We laughed a lot. :) But now I have to go to bed. Went to school around 6:30 am and didn't get home until 7 p.m. I'm sure you can imagine my awesome mood right now :). I would love if you could pray specifically that I would be able to get everything done that needs to be done before I fly out on Thursday, for safe travels, and also that I would be able to get the special education program up and running and really making a difference in the kids' lives :) Thanks, love you all!

$8 pedicures :)

This weekend has definitely had its ups and downs. Friday I had bball practice and then I worked on school work all night long. I was so overwhelmed with the workload that I felt sick. I'm trying to plan for the half-day kindergarten and trying to set up the special education program and it is just a little crazy. On Saturday though, we had a nice break. We went to the market and then we went to get pedicures!! It was such a fun time. They are only 4,000 colones, which is roughly $8 here. And we have little designs on our toenails. To you men reading this, you probably don't think that is a big deal. But pedicures are from $30-$50 in the U.S. and they feel so good when you always have dirty beat up feet from walking everywhere in the dirt and rain. It was a huge blessing. Then we went to some of our teacher friends' house and they made us some authentic Costa Rican dishes like fried plantains, lentil soup, gauacamole, corn pancakes and a plantain with sugarcain dessert. It was wonderful. I liked everything but the dessert was a new experience. It was this brown mixture with plantains, sugar cain, milk, and then some cheese. Very interesting...the cheese got to me a little bit. :) Then today we had church and grocery shopping and some missionary friends invited us over for a spaghetti lunch, which was such a treat. Well that's just a summary and so much else has happened. Thank you so much for your continuing prayers. I will be returning to the states this week for a little bit because one of my best friends is getting married, but I won't be home at all. I'm excited to see my mom and some friends...but I think it will be weird to be back in the States. Life is so different here. I'm especially excited to pick up some things that we would like to have that you can't get here or that are very expensive here. So that will be good. Well I must go plan since I will be gone. God bless you for your prayers for strength and faith in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Rambutan, sushi and peanut butter

Hello! So today was an interesting day. Our day started off a little crazy and I felt really out of sorts. I was praying that God would encourage me and give me energy and the coolest thing happened! My student aide, whom I adore, came in with a huge tub of chunky peanut butter for me. She said her family bought it for me because they knew I loved pb and because it is so expensive for me to buy here. I started crying. It was such a blessing. I have been rationing one of the mini jars for about a week now and it needs to last a while longer...so that was so amazing. I was so overwhelmed and grateful both to Bethany and her family, but also to God...because He knows exactly what we need. Then, later, my Korean family came in and brought me a roll of sushi! Mmmm... apparently it's more of a rice roll with veggies and meat and seaweed, but it's really good. What a funny but much appreciated gift. Today was so interesting because I knew it was Children's Day in Costa Rica, but I had no idea how big of a deal it was. It turned out that I didn't really have to teach all day. We played games, ate pizza, popcorn, ice cream, candy, and jello with condensed milk on top (a delicacy here). It was a lot of fun and something I totally did not expect! But flexibility is of utmost importance here :). And finally, I've included some pictures of one of my favorite Costa Rican fruits. It's called Rambutan and it's like a big raspberry with spikes. You break it open and inside is this gooey substance that you eat. The consistency is pretty odd...but the taste is great. I think it's funny, so I thought you might get a kick out of it! :)

Thanks mom :)

So, I've been thinking of this one for a while and I just thought I would voice it. Along with moving to a different country and having a new job, us girls have also had to tackle the task of living on our own. None of us have really truly done that before, so we are learning a lot. For example, going to the grocery store, I have no idea what the difference is between baking powder and baking soda. Maybe that is basic, but I didn't know. But also just things like not knowing how much meat to get (especially since everything is in Kilos). Plus everything is in Spanish. You should have seen me looking for buttermilk on Saturday...I think I walked away with whipping cream. Is that the same thing? I don't think so. Anyway, so we have just been kinda working our way through all this. We each make dinner two nights a week and everything is basically homemade from scratch because we can't afford to buy packaged foods, especially if they are imported from America. (I will definitely be eating a box of Honey Bunches of Oats when I get home). So cooking just takes forever. And planning out meals takes forever. lol don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, I just never understood! Like tonight, I made stuffed peppers, mashed potatoes, guacamole and fried platanos. It took like 2 hours! All that to say that I have a newfound appreciation for my mother. I never realized how much time it took to plan for, buy, and cook all this food!! So thanks mom...you rock. :)

Basketball coach

So yesterday we started basketball! It was muy interesante (very interesting)! I had a lot of fun...and I think they did too. We have about 9 guys playing and two girls. So we have an interesting dynamic going on :). We had a good time, and we all had a good workout (even me). I had to play because we didn't have enough people at the first practice. I know I'm not supposed to play with all the knee surgeries I had, but I couldn't help it. We never get to work out here, so it felt good. So all went well with that. I think I will be an okay coach, but I just love to have fun with basketball, so I really need to work on being serious and actually making them work :). It's funny hearing English and Spanish being thrown around on the court though. We also could definitely use some nets and new balls, so I'm going to have to put that into my budget at some point. So that all went well. Everything else is going well. I'm just taking everything day by day and trusting the Lord :).

Philippians 4:13, " I can do all things through Him who gives me strength."

molestar = to bother

Semi-funny story here for you. On Friday, one of my little boys must have been bothering one of my little girls, and she came up to me to tell on him. She said in Spanish to please tell the boy to stop bothering her. The word for bother in Spanish is molestar. So she said the word "molestando" which mean bothering. Well sometimes when you are learning a new language, your brain thinks in both languages and Spanglish comes out on accident. So I make the whole class get quiet and I say very loudly, "NO MORE MOLESTING EACH OTHER!" I ate those words right away. My teacher's aide started cracking up and I'm sure other teachers had to hear me. lol the kids are too small to notice, but I was just praying that my principal or any parents weren't walking by at that second. Embarassing!

Dying to Self...

So something else I have been thinking about that I thought I would share. I'm reading a book by Amy Carmichael (a woman who served as a missionary working with children in India several decades ago) and one part really stuck out to me. The book is called You are My Hiding Place and the excerpt is called "A chance to die." It's all about using everyday experiences with others to really die to ourselves and have Christ living though us. I keep asking myself...am I really doing this? She writes, "take every opportunity as a chance to die...to die to self, to the pride that comes from defending ourselves...die to anything that rouses you to 'claim your rights' or even to consider them at all. Welcome anything that calls you to your only true position: 'I have been crucified with Christ...' A crucified life cannot be self-assertive. It cannot protect itself. It cannot be startled into resentful words. The cup that is full of sweet water cannot spill bitter-tasting drops, however sharply it is knocked." Basically, she is just saying if we have been crucified with Christ, and we are filled by Him, our thoughts and our speech should be overflowing with Him, and they should be pursuing the question not of "how can I meet my needs today?" but of "how can I deny myself for His glory today?"

Galatians 2:20

"I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me."

Gifts for the teacher...:-)

Hello! So just a quick one tonight because I need to plan for next week, but I just had to real quick say how God has been blessing me! I've had parent teacher conferences this week and they've went really well. One was in Spanish...lol but I thought it went well for the most part. The family brought me a dozen roses! How awesome is that??? They are from Korea and apparently it is customary to bring flowers and food, etc. to teachers...but that just about made me cry! Then, today, at another conference, the family brought me a chocolate frosting donut and this cappucino drink! They are just so sweet. Once again, I was just so overwhelmed by the support and encouragement from the families. And the great thing is...is that they have no idea how much it really really means to me. It is SO encouraging. Like today was such a long day and then to get a chocolate donut near the end of it just totally made my day. Awesome. It may seem silly to say that God gives us what we need in reference to flowers and chocolate donuts, but the action of people saying they appreciate what I am doing was exactly what I needed. Thank you Jesus and God bless those parents :)

Enough?

First off, I am sorry to all of you that are struggling from the power outage. That is crazy. We didn't even know that happened. I can sort of identify, we lose power in our aparment and classroom all of the time. It's hard to get anything done! Anyway, my post is appropriately titled "enough" today because I've been thinking a lot about that concept. In Bible study, we've been talking about the lies women believe and this week, I've noticed that I've been attacked with the feelings that I'm not good enough. This experience has definitely been humbling. Not knowing the language fluently, not knowing what to do with a bilingual kindergarten class, living somewhere I have never been...the list could go on. God has just had me on my face constantly...just trusting in Him for the strength and grace for each day. It's been SO humbling... I can't even describe it adequately. I mean, I get laughed at by 5 year olds sometimes because I don't know a word in Spanish. Being laughed at by an uneducated child will take that pride right away :). Well, like I said, I have been humbled, but I've also struggled a bit wondering if I am good enough for this. I just keep thinking, I'm not enough of this or enough of that. And it goes so much further to other areas of my life. But last night at Bible study, we were talking about this and one girl pointed out that everything we were talking about was us girls wondering, "are we enough?" And the answer is no, we will never be enough. However, our God is enough. He is more than enough. He is all sufficient for all that we need. He has us where we are at to do His work in His strength. Our everyday is ordained by God...none of this is surprising to Him. We are just called to be filled by the vine, because without Him, we are nothing. John 15:5 says, "I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit for apart from Me you can do nothing." We never have to worry about not being able to do the work He calls us to...we never have to worry about being good enough. We will never be good enough, we will never be able to do it alone. But our God is good enough and makes us beautiful and able and good because of who He is...faithful, sovereign and full of grace. That is awesome. How great is the God we serve?

I'm loving this song (Click here) right now... just emphasizes the greatness of God and has helped me to focus on God throughout all of this :)

More pics from this weekend

Dragonfly: sloth: girls: children in the parade : the beach: a rainforest crab: the view from our hostel:

Sorry I haven’t posted in several days…I went to the beach! On Friday, we celebrated CR Independence Day, so my students did a parade for the whole school. They banged on drums and different instruments. Everyone loved it. Right after school I had my first parent open house, which is a whole different story when half of the parents don’t speak English. Right after school, we left for Manuel Antonio, a beach on the Pacific side of Costa Rica. We took a five hour bus ride through the mountains and rainforest and came to the beach. It was beautiful. On Saturday, we went to the rainforest and saw all kinds of neat plants and animals. I saw monkeys, sloths, and some different iguanas and things. It was really neat. Then we went to beach on the edge of the rainforest, and that was beautiful. While we were laying there though, a raccoon came out of the forest and took off with all of our food! We threw suntan lotion at it, but it still made off with a whole bag of tortilla chips. I was ticked. The beaches were beautiful and the food was pretty good. We always eat a little hole in the wall places that don’t look very clean, but we’re pretty poor, so we take what we can get J. The funniest part of our trip was the hostel we stayed in. I’ve never experienced a hostel before, so it was interesting. I won’t go into all the details, but the first night was fine. It was just us four and another girl sharing a 14 person room. When we got back from the beach on Saturday night though, we found out that our 14 person room was full of random guys and girls. It was so weird. I felt a little uncomfortable, but what are you going to do? We didn’t bring any valuables, so I wasn’t too worried about my stuff getting stolen, but I was a little worried about our safety, just sleeping in a room with all these random people we don’t know at all. It was also difficult to share one toilet and one shower between all those people. The view was beautiful though. It was perched in the middle of the rainforest on a mountain overlooking the ocean. And it was $6 a night. I just tried to think of it like camping J. We left on Sunday and made the trip home in the bus. This morning we went to the Independence Day parade. The kids all dress up in native dress and they are so cute. The rest of the day has been spent cleaning our dirty house to no end. I feel as though both our apartment and ourselves are perpetually dirty here, no matter how much you try to clean. Oh well…I kinda like it J. Well I have to go make some dinner…which will obviously consist of some rice concoction because that is pretty much what we eat here. God bless!

Playing in the rain :)

Well, the last two days have been pretty great! Exhausting...but great :). I feel like my students are finally starting to be quiet in the halls, stand in line...you know, all the kinder stuff. That's good. However, we had a slight problem today :). We were walking back from art class and it was a pouring rain. Pouring rain in Costa Rica is 10x worse than any pouring rain you are thinking about in America. Basically it's pointless to talk when it's raining because it comes down so hard. Anyway, our school hallways are outdoors, so we had to go through a rainy part. My kids went crazy! They started running everywhere and playing in the rain! One little girl laid down on her stomach in a puddle. She was soaked! lol honestly all I could do was laugh. The director of the board was standing right there laughing right along with me. What can you do? 5 year olds just love playing the rain. :) Just hearing them laugh was like music in my ears. You should have seen me darting around to get them in the room when it was time to stop getting soaking wet. haha. It's like herding cats. Impossible. :) Everything is going well though. Sometimes I think about how far from home we are...especially when a plane goes over, but the most reassuring thing is thinking that Christ is our refuge and our home. As always, I am reading an Elisabeth Elliot book and she talks about how we are always "safe in the everlasting arms." I love that. No matter how far away from we are or how many changes take place, we always have a refuge in the everlasting arms. Amen and amen :). Love you all.

Special prayer request...

So I have a special prayer request :) I would love if you could pray that I would really start knowing the language. I can get by and understand decently, but I am by no means fluent. As I sit here trying to think about the special education teacher aspect of my job, I am overwhelmed by all of the paperwork written in Spanish. So, I would just love if the Lord would just switch something over in my brain, that it might just really understand. lol maybe just a supernatural impartation of language knowledge??? lol wishful thinking...but hey, our God can do anything right? :) I heard this story today about a missionary at our language school here who didn't know the language but arrived at a Spanish church and needed to preach. There was no translator and no one understood English...so he just prayed for a supernatural knowledge of Spanish for the message and he just picked it up and preached a couple of minutes later in Spanish. How sweet is that? And his knowledge of the language never went away! True story.God is doing amazing things as always! How great it is to serve our great God!

Monday...

So this will be short because Monday's are so tiring! Just a few things...today was good. Only one child screaming for a short period of time, so that was good. Praise Jesus. They are definitely doing better! Secondly, we went to a single girls' Bible study tonight, which was great. It was so good to get out of the house and have some communication with other girls in the same position we are in. What was funny was that on the way home, we were in a taxi discussing many things about the meeting...including some personal things...thinking the taxi driver didn't understand. Well, he said something in English and I asked, "entiendes mucho Ingles?" which means, "do you understand much English?" And he said "Si." uh oh. lol we were rolling. He said, "when you get in taxi, make sure driver no speak English!" funny. And finally, I am the basketball coach at my school! I am excited, I think it will be a good outlet and it will be fun to work with the older students! yay :)

Sunday :)

So the past two days have been great. Kim and I went to the store and ended up exploring the area. We found this amazing church in the middle of the city with a park next to it. There was some kind of ministry in the park that was trying to raise awareness about poverty and hunger around the world. There were many teens doing cultural dances and there were booths with native missionaries in them. We met one lady, who ended up taking our names and emails, who was part of an organization that works with the homeless people in San Jose. They tell them about Jesus and try to help their physical needs, so we are really hoping to get involved with that. After all that, we came back and slept forever. This morning, we were able to "sleep in" which in CR terms is about 6:00/6:30ish. Never thought I would say this, but it was awesome. We had church and that was great and then we've been lesson planning ever since. We've also made some tasty Costa Rica meals...we're hoping to be amazing cooks by the time we get back to America. We've also realized that we have a slight infestation of bugs in our cute aparment, mainly tiny fruit flies...nothing bad...but I don't believe my mom would approve of our current living conditions. :) Nothing stays clean here...it is just always muddy. lol but we love it...it's all part of living here. And finally, Kim and I tried out our first "hora de espanol", which is our hour of speaking Spanish only. We did pretty good and learned from each other. We are all trying to make it a habit to speak in Spanish to one another. oh well...tomorrow starts a new week, so I need to go to bed soon! Good night!

Post office and no crying!

Well the end of this week has been pretty interesting. I needed to have my lesson plans done by Friday, so I didn’t have time to post. Thursday was a better day. There was only one child crying. He kept trying to escape. After school, I had to go to the post office…which was an interesting experience. I needed to pick up a huge box from my mom. First of all, the employee working was a cute, young guy, and we all know how awkward I am, so I got a little flustered. Lol well he brings out this huge box and asks if I have a car…to which I said no. He then asks, do you have a big boyfriend? And to this I say no again and he said, “well how are you going to carry this box?” lol I don’t know. So I grab my box and then I told him I needed another box and tape because I needed to send something to the states. After a blank stare and some more conversation, I find out that post offices in CR are not like post offices in the U.S. I was like what? You’re a post office and you don’t have boxes or tape!? THEN, more Americans walk up to the counter and ask for a box right after me. It was hysterical. Then, my principal randomly walks in and I ask her what is going on and she takes all of us aside and had to remind us that we are no longer in America. Agh! Frustrating! So I finally figured that all out. Then I got all the way home and realized I left my umbrella there…so I had to walk all the way back and get it. When I got there I didn’t see it, but just as I was about to leave, I see the post office guy waving it through the air with a goofy look on his face. I know exactly what he was thinking, “dumb American.” Lol I walked out as quickly as possible and totally trip and fall on the sidewalk. I am a struggle! Then on Friday, we started the day…and you will not believe this, but no kids cried. I was praising Jesus! Oh it was so exciting. And they did so much better. Words cannot describe how excited I was. Thanks for your prayers! And the coolest thing was that one of my student’s parents gave me a note and a big carton of chocolate brownie ice cream because they felt bad for me!!! They are so sweet! Overall, the week ended so well!

Midweek madness!

Hey there! Well...Tuesday and Wednesday have been so much better. We still have the bloody murder screams going on, however, they are having a much shorter duration (thank Jesus). Everything has been much better. We definitely aren't perfect...actually we have a really long way to go, but it is getting better. We worked on standing in line today. That's a big deal. :) Thank you for praying for my strength. It is definitely paying off. I just surrender to God the day ahead and let Him take care of it. Life works so much better that way. Well one amazing story I have for you is that we had a lizard in the class today. It creeped in and I tried to catch it, but it didn't work. Everyone started screaming at the top of their lungs. Then one of my Tico boys caught the lizard and had it by the tail...and its tail fell off. Of course that sent everyone into scream mode (especially since the tail was still moving and twitching.) It was a madhouse. Kids started screaming and running into the hallway. A parent walked by and I can only imagine what she was thinking!!! It took a while for us to recover from that. lol those American kiddies just aren't used to lizards in the classroom...and the Costa Rican kiddies were just feeding off of the Americans. lol oh well. thanks for your prayers! Above is a picture of my students :).

Kate falling out of bed...

Ps...I forgot to tell you that last night, Kate fell out of bed. It was great. Our alarm clock went off at 12 am because we forgot to reset it after the electricity went out. So Kate reached to turn it off because it was unusually loud, and in the process, fell out of bed...taking the clock with her. I was scared because all I heard was a loud noise, a thump, and Kate was gone. Almost thinking the rapture had happened, I was like, "Kate?" and her little head peeked up over the edge of the bed as she moaned. lol then we thought it was time to get up, so we started scrambling around. Realizing it was too pitch black for Cost Rica 5 am, we checked another clock and just started dying laughing. Needless to say, we are still spontaneously cracking up about that situation. :)

Kindergarten torture chamber :)

I feel like my title today is very appropriate because if you walked by my room, you would think you were walking past a torture chamber. My main problem is that I have several students that aren't transitioning well to kindergarten and like to share ear-piercing, blood-curdling screams. I had one child scream and cry all day and several others burst into random fits/temper tantrums. It was truly chaos. At one point I had four primary teachers helping me in my classroom. It was so stressful. Words cannot describe. I know I can tend to be dramatic about my semi-dramatic life, but this time I'm truly not exaggerating :). I honestly was begging God to give me strength and patience. I really covet your prayers. This is so humbling because I can definitely tend to be proud, and I feel so lost right now. I don't mind asking for help, but I hate being the one that needs help all the time. I had to call for help so many times today, it was so humbling. I asked for God to humble me before I came and He definitely isn't letting me get out easy on that prayer. And really, my pride would really like for you all to think that I am starting out as an awesome kindergarten teacher, but my need for prayer is definitely overcoming that pride. Alright. Enough of the sob story, I really just need your prayers. The most encouraging thing today was that one Tico boy who I felt like I had reprimanded all day for out control behavior came up to me and gave me a hug and said in his broken English, "I love you." I pretty much started crying. Lord God, thank you for that blessing. It got me through the rest of the day. On a lighter note, I just wanted you to know that I went back to the meat counter at the grocery store to get chicken and the men working at the counter started cracking up. Clearly they have not forgotten my embarassing chicken breast comment/gesture (for those of you that ready my chicken breast post). Awesome. I'm already making a name for myself in Costa Rica. :) God bless!