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).

"Can you hear me now, or do I need to leave a trail?"

"Go that way! That way!
Wait go left! Your different left, I mean right!"

       This week, we had a wonderful time diving into our material with great hands-on activities! In math we continue to use a lot of manipulatives to discover more about multiplication and division concepts. My students are beyond excited about the concepts and working to improve their previous accomplishments. I actually have a waiting list for who can check out our class sets of flashcards (I only have 2 multiplication and 1 division).

Interphase, Mitosis, Cytokinesis, Woo Hoo!

        In 5th grade science we have made family genetic trait trees! We asked questions of our relatives and displaying them on a family tree to track where our genetic traits come from! We also made 3 dimensional posters to show the process of a cell’s cycle of reproduction through mitosis! The students did a great job on these posters! In 4th grade we acted out echolocation through working with a partner and trying to find our way through a predetermined path around the classroom that only their seeing partner knew. Today we also worked to represent how ants find food and then help to tell this to other ants to find this same food. The first lab activity had one student come into the class to find Nit Wit (my stuffed “slam it” bug). Then in just a few seconds that student must convey where it is to the next students only using motions. The second student then goes to find the bug and then motion to the next person waiting in the hall. Each of these students is timed to see how fast they can find the “food” (Nit Wit). Then we try it again and this time we use pieces of paper as makers to guide the next student. These papers were to represent pheromones. We noticed as a class that it was far easier with the pheronomes to help the next ant navigate to the food!

Echolocationin the style of Miss Weber's
4th grade class!

Prayer Requests:
- We have bed bugs again! This time they are in my roommate’s bed! We also have an increase in bugs as this is the highpoint in the bug season. Despite numerous precautions, we are still struggling with this problem. Please pray that we are physically safe during this time.

- Please pray for our students, we have wonderful students but as at any school many of our students struggle a lot with different challenges.

- The end of the school year is fast approaching. Please pray we get the work needed done and finish this semester well!

Firsts:

- First time given cocaine from a student as a gift! Okay so it is really Coca Tea and made from the leaves that are used to make cocaine. No I had not had any of the tea to drink, still it was very surprising to discover it!

- First time doing Karaoke in Spanish! I didn’t even know the song! That was a lot of fun and very challenging!

- First time seeing Halls cough drop (which is actually considered by most as candy here!) that is Sprite flavored!

 - First two times this week, that I really almost got in bus accidents! No please don’t worry too much we are all fine. One bus hit the curb (or something else but my imagination keeps telling me to think of it as the curb) on a narrow street as turning and lost something out the back. As we still kept driving I can only assume it was not too detrimental. The second came as another truck screeched to a halt less than an inch from the side of our bus in an intersection! Thankfully I was on the other side of the bus!

We also did a lab to see try out how different organisms acquire
their food and nutrients. This student had to be a fish eating
 pasta out of a bowl of water!

Back in the Saddle Again!

It is Spring here and everything is starting into full bloom!

          Camp and parent-teacher conferences have come and gone. They both have gone very well, praise the Lord! We only have a few weeks left in this semester! As we work hard, the time seems to fly faster and faster! This week we have many exciting things going on! In science we are making a family tree of genetic traits, 3-D diagrams of mitosis, and discovering about the body plans and means of acquiring food for different organisms. In math we have just started to dive into multiplication and division for our two grades! A daunting task for some of the students, but we have started well and the students are really getting excited!

Red Team boys from camp! Apart of the winning team! Go RED!

           I have also started to attend a Spanish church regularly and am truly enjoying the community and opportunity to worship in Spanish. Some of the missionary family that attend the school have planted this church and it has been growing at an exciting rate. While it is still rather small more people seem to attend each week. The church is appropriately named, Mi Esperanza, my hope!

Prayer Requests:

Some of my girls being girls!

- One of my students has had to suddenly leave my class on Friday. Her family needed to leave Paraguay and return to the US. Her father is having severe heart problems and is in need of open heart surgery. Unfortunately this decision had to be made quickly and the children did not get to say goodbye to their friends or the class. Clearly this has been hard on the family and their return date in unknown. At this point we are to assume that they will not be returning for the rest of the semester and potentially not the next semester either. Please pray for this family, these students, and their mission here in Paraguay.

- Please pray for wisdom into my students that I can best show God’s love to them and help them grow and mature!

Firsts:


Marshmellows are both expensive and
 very rare here. So having them at camp was
 a highlight for many of my students.

 - First Parent- Teacher conferences! This last Friday, I had my first set of conferences for both my 4^th and 5^th grade students. It was quite the day with most of my conferences needing a translator into Spanish and half of those needing a translation from Spanish into Korean, Chinese, or Taiwanese! Not only had that but my team teacher for 4^th and 5^th grade also met in the meetings, since the students have both teachers. This opportunity provided a good team to meet with the parents as we were able to discuss and confirm material together. So each conference was quite the party with so many people in the room! Still the Lord was good, and I do believe that the conferences were able to appropriately convey the information and help us to work together more and build up the relationships together!

The RED GIRLS: First to be ready for chapel to add more point
 for our team! Not that we were competitive or anything! : )

Camp has come and gone!

Camp went wonderfully! The students had a blast and really enjoyed the break from the classroom. From the pool to water games, soccer tournaments, volleyball, crafts, and chapels the students were able to learn and grow together! We did have some surprises and a few challenges, but the Lord is good and we were able to flex and adapt through the challenges. Thank the Lord also for Summer’s Best Two Weeks as I was able to integrate a lot of the wonderful memories and experiences from that camp into this one. For instance at the end of the trip as we were loading onto the bus we discovered that the last group on the bus had a great party and had vomit all over the back of the bus. So as the drivers to the bus away for an hour to clean, we taught them almost 2 dozen songs with motions as we waited in the side walk for the bus to return! Most of these songs the students had already learned from our morning exercise time and of course the students can’t stop singing these songs! I also started the meal greetings with the clapping, singing and jumping around. I was the head captain of …. The red team ( sound familiar (Go ROMANS!))! I may have taken the competition and excitement of the team competitions to the next level as you can see in the pictures! We definitely adapted several of the Roman cheers to match the red and some of my Roman gear and crafts (necklaces and headbands) also were included this year! Go RED!!!!! (We haven’t officially found out who won….. but I am nearly positive the best red team came out on top!!!!!).

My crafts and games that I organized also went well and the students have plenty of picture frames and friendship bracelets. I wish that I had time to tell you all the stories and great memories, but that would take hours and will have to wait until I see you next.

Thank you so much for all of your prayers!

Prayer Requests:
- Parent-Teacher conferences are this Friday! Please pray that they go smoothly, that the needed information is conveyed and in the best manner. We will be using translators and sometimes this can present a hard challenge in allowing good communication in a potentially challenging situation.

-Please continue to pray for the regular prayer requests.

 
Firsts:

- First time really seeing the stars in Paraguay! The country is beautiful as is the air! I was able to breathe clearly without the intense pollution that is in the city.

- First time leading a camp for my classroom students! It was different to carry our relationship and interaction to a different setting, but also so wonderful to see them in a more casual situation and to get to know them all better.

- First time having my bread show mold! I have been trying to get this bread to show mold since school started (July!!!) and this is the first time any mold has appeared on the bread despite our best efforts to provide the perfect environment for mold to grow. It turned into quite the science experiment. GO PRESERVATIVES!