Feliz Dia de Gracias!

        Happy Thanksgiving! I hope and pray that all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and holiday with your family! I spent it with 2 wonderful missionary families and another teacher family that live in our apartments. We had the full out turkey*, green bean casserole*, sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie* (* have components that are not found in Paraguay). It was wonderful! We have Thursday and Friday off school which is much needed. It has been great to have a break and join together in a US tradition.

       We are almost done with semester and are working hard to finish up! I can’t believe that this time next week, our first semester will be over! Plus in two days after that I will be on a flight home! Time has truly flown so fast. Especially in this last week; this is why this post has come later than normal. On Tuesday we had our Christmas concert for elementary! It went really well. I helped with two other mothers to set up and decorate our cancha (covered basketball court/all purpose), for two and half hours with decorations made by the students and other supplies. Shortly following a strange rain storm occurred and caused us to move everything inside! Thankfully everyone was very and understanding helped to move it smoothly. The funny thing is two blocks down from us it did not rain a drop! Still is was great to see how many parents showed up in support, especially as traditionally in Paraguay everything is cancelled if it rains!


Prayer Requests:
- As the end of the year is approaching our students are very energetic and with that have been teasing each other more. I have talked with them a lot about this recently and we are making progress. Still a lot of pain and habit have been building for years and it will take a while to make huge changes.
- End of the year completions!

- Strength and patience for our teachers and students!

Firsts:

- First time finding, Dulce de Leche…… baby food! Oh yes they start them very young here! Dulce de Leche is similar to a caramel and incredibly popular here. In fact it sometimes seems more common than chocolate! So why not in baby food!

- First time that someone has told me that they have heard of Pennsylvania, but don’t like it because Dracula lives there. I was talking to one of our sweet cleaning ladies in Spanish and she thought that Transylvania is in Pennsylvania. After I cleared up the information and told her of my time in Transylavania in Romania and of the “noble” Count Dracula, she said she might like Pennsylvania now!

 

        What a good week! We are hard at work finishing up our amusement park rides in their design and will be calculating and determining the financial components regarding the park. From maintenance and staff to concession stand food and prizes, the students will determine how they can best use their budget to provide and run the amusement park! Next week we only have 3 days of school as we do celebrate one American holiday, THANKSGIVING!!!! We get Thursday and Friday off and then the following week is our last week which ends on Thursday! I can’t believe how fast this time has flown.

Catapults are so great at
demonstrating levers... and who
doesn't love catapulting candy across the classroom!

        With the end of the semester does come excitement and extra balls of energy! Thankfully the Lord will always fill up my cup to overflowing with patience and joy. Still these students are jumping beans trying to hold themselves down with scotch tape. All of my students have had a great semester and we are coming to a good end!





November Fest: A large garage
 sale at our school which happened on Friday!

Prayer Requests:

- Please pray for patience of our students and for the teachers, well will certainly need it as the weather is in the high 90s and the holidays are soon approaching!

- Please pray for the physical and mental health of the all of our teachers, the stress and fatigue can take its toll.

Firsts:- First time teaching and helping with Christmas decorations that did not involve snow of any sort both in art club and with my class! Of course this was more my choice than Paraguay’s as they use snowman and fake snow all the time, yet none has ever been seen in Paraguay!
- First time hearing the word “disconcentrating”, used in the context of “You are disconcentrating me”. Children say the cutest things!

Dairy, Soccer, and Family: A balanced Paraguayan pyramid for the last week

        This has been a very busy week and seems to be only the foreshadowing of the weeks to come! Yet the blessing of work comes the opportunities to serve! Along with the regular classroom responsibilities, art club, after school tutoring for students, ordering books for next year, the surprise challenges, and Family Adventure Night. This Friday we had Family Adventure Night, which was a PTA run event used to raise money for a new playground. A carnival like set up each grade was paired with another one (4th and 10th, GO PURPLE TEAM!!!!) on a team to run a booth and games to receive tickets. The competition to see who can get the most tickets wins a party for the grades. Thankfully the event went very smoothly. It was a wonderful opportunity to work with my parents and get to know them better. The Lord has truly blessed me with the improvement of my Spanish and ability to converse with many of these parents. While this event was to mostly be run by the parents, my room parent and I had the chance to work together well planning the booth and decorating that night. It was great to have a chance to get out of the classroom and bond with my students.

         We finished our math and science chapters last week and are entering into our last chapters before Christmas/summer break. With this comes the start of our ending project! The last week of school, while the high school and middle school are taking their finals we will be building and designing an entire AMUSEMENT PARK!!!!!!!!! This week 4th and 5th grade are starting to design their own rides, applying the physics concepts which we are learning about! The fourth graders are using transition, rotation, and vibration forms of motion, along with force, work, and taking into consideration the forces that will be present and using them to their advantage. Fifth grade are working on using simple machines, working with speed, velocity, and acceleration just to get started! The students are definitely excited. It has proven a wonderful application of these concepts. I will be sure to keep you posted!

Prayer Requests:
- PRAISE- I thank the Lord so much for the wonderful support, encouragement, and love that I have constantly receive from my family! I do love you all!
- For my students, that they will feel the love of the Lord and continue to grow closer to Him.
- For the people of Paraguay, as the heat increases many health issues can arise during this time.
- For the other new teachers who are very homesick.

- For the last few weeks to go smoothly and end this semester well!

Firsts:

- First time finding cheddar cheese in Paraguay!!!!! I had ten slices yesterday! Besides mozzarella and Holland cheese there is usually no other US cheeses.

- Family Adventure Night

- - First time meeting the national soccer coach for Paraguay!

- - First time standing tippy toe on a tottery ladder, translating from one parent who mostly speaks Korean with some English to another parent who almost only speaks Spanish, while tying a purple shimmery ball from the ceiling of our tent! This lasted for a few minutes and I didn’t realize how funny it was until afterwards!

Christmas: Love, Hope, and Prayer!

Christmas is soon approaching! I know it is more than 60 days away, but here at the school we are done in less than a month! With the upcoming holiday we have Christmas concerts, final projects, and the celebration of Christ's birth! With Christmas and God's gift to us come reminders of God's love for all of us. Love for my students, for the new Paraguayan politicians, for the other teachers, for the broken homes, for the simple acts of kindness and for the small children on the streets getting any money they can to bring back many to their alcoholic or drug addict parents. The wonderful thing is that when God looks at the Paraguay, His love surpasses the dirt, grime, pain, corruption and reveals the true beauty that God sees.

With Christmas also come the gifts. While none of us can give as great of a gift as God gave to us, in His memory we can give gifts that bless people and can continue to give. Many of the wonderful classroom blessings in the states are hard to find here or are very expensive. Therefore I would like to present the option to give a gift this Christmas that keeps on giving in the lives of my students. If this interests you please look to the right on this page to see more information. Of course the most important thing that will continue to bless my students is to continue to pray for these students, their parents, our school, and Paraguay. Paraguay is a land of pain and hurt and with Christmas comes a hope. Even in the smallest prayer great things can happen.

This week has gone very well and my students are eagerly finishing up chapters this week and starting into their last chapters before break! This Friday we have Family Adventure Day and my fourth graders are competing with the tenths graders to see which grades can bring in the most money for the PTA. Our booth is based on “Minute to Win It”! One game is shooting soccer goals and the other is Yoyo on a string. The purple team is very optimistic that we can win this competition! In art club we are hard at work decorating for the Christmas Concert. It is harder than you think trying to make lots of Christmas decorations without snow and other North American customs!

Prayer Requests:
- Many of the requests are listed above!
- Also please pray for the other teachers, many of the new ones are getting very homesick and all of us need to strength and energy to finish strong for this semester!
- Please pray for the health in Paraguay as the heat increases so do a lot of the bugs and diseases here!

Firsts:
- First time going to the movies in Paraguay! While the advertisements were in Spanish the movie was in English except for Spanish subtitles. We had a blast!

- First time our kitchen and dining area flooding from thewater that filled our balcony and flowed under our door! This was a bonding experience for me and my roommate at midnight as we squeegeed the water from the rooms down tiny holes on our balcony. What a great half an hour work out to get it to a satisfactory state (i.e. we couldn’t get any more out/we were falling asleep).