Everything is new

Here are my journal entries from the past few days.

January 19th

This morning I met with Profe Carlos, the director of the school, about my teaching assignment. He let me choose whether I would rather work with the elementary or secondary grades. I chose the younger students, because I thought I would be more comfortable with beginners, since that’s what I’m used to teaching. I felt a little overwhelmed when I realized how many levels I will be teaching. I will be teaching Pre-K to 4th grade, which is 7 levels (because they have another level between Kindergarten and 1st grade). They do have teacher’s editions for all the levels so that will be helpful.

Deann West took us to a little mall in Coban today, so we could go to the ATM and the grocery store. Coban is about a half hour drive from here, it is the closest city. Erin took us on a little tour of the campus and a walk into town. I recognized several places from the last time we visited but I still don’t have a good sense of direction about where everything is. This will come in time.

Deann invited us over for dinner- homemade minestrone with freshly baked bread. That was wonderful, and it nice to warm up in their house since it’s still chilly here.

It rained last night so that helped the water situation some. I was feeling pretty gross by this afternoon since I couldn’t wash my hair this morning but thankfully there was enough hot water tonight. Sometimes there isn’t any water at all during the day.

Last night I got to play volleyball. My team’s name is “Las chistosas” (the jokes). This gives you some indication of how well we play. Actually, we did pretty well, we won one set and came very close on the other two sets, though we lost the game. It was fun to be playing volleyball again. We’ll get to play again tomorrow night. They have volleyball on the courts here Tuesdays and Thursdays and church is Wednesday and Saturday nights. Tonight at church Tonya (Pastor Mike’s wife) shared some of her life story. I guess the Lewis’ have been sharing about their lives and how the Lord brought them here to Guatemala. I always enjoy hearing people talk about what the Lord has done in their lives.

January 20th

It is a beautiful day. The sun peeks out of the clouds every once in a while and there is a slight breeze. It’s not very warm, I’m still wearing my hat and scarf most of the time. But it isn’t raining, which is good for now because I just put my laundry on the line. I was thankful for enough water to do a load of laundry, since most of my warm clothes are dirty. I am sitting on our porch. My view includes our hammock, the laundry line, a hedgerow which hides the maintenance shed and tall pines and leafy trees on the other side of the hill. The school buildings are at the lowest level of the campus and the other houses, including ours are on the surrounding hillsides. It is very hilly around here, and if you look off into the distance you see layers of hillsides up to the clouds.

From the porch I can hear carpenters sawing in the maintenance shed, trucks passing on the main road, music from a nearby house along with the occasional sounds of children playing, birds chirping and dogs barking. It smells good here. Sometimes I’ll be walking along and I suddenly notice the smell of flowers or plants. It is a nice change from winter in NY!

This morning the director of the school called me in to change my assignment. I will be teaching the older children instead, grades 4-9 and 1st grade. So I have a lot of planning to do but I’m sure after a few weeks I will “get into the groove” and have a routine down for each class.

Around here people eat the main meal in the early afternoon instead of the evening. At our house we will take turns cooking for this meal. This week is Yanira’s turn, and she is a very good cook. I am wracking my brain for things that I can cook when it is my turn. I haven’t done much cooking in a while, and I’m used to cooking for only a few people. Lately we have about 8 people every day for lunch.

Well, it’s almost time for worship practice, I think I’m going to go and check it out.

January 21st

Today was a beautiful sunny day! This was such a relief because I feel like I’ve been cold for days. I went for a little walk up the hill before breakfast and everything is so beautiful- the mountains, all the green everywhere, the mist in the hills, the sounds of the birds.

This morning I went to the teacher’s meeting at the school. I understood most of what was going on. Profe Carlos talked about general school stuff- discipline, order, schedules, etc. He wants us to come in at 7am and spend the first 15 minutes of our day praying for our students, so we will be there when they arrive, and we will be prepared spiritually for the day. He reminded us that as we get to know the students we will get to know more and more of their needs to take to God in prayer. He also talked about the story of Elijah, when he stopped at the widow’s house and asked for some oil, and all she had was a little bit of oil because she was so poor, but what she had she offered to him. He used this story to point out that each of us has our little bit of oil to offer to the students. He said it all a lot more eloquently, but I can’t really capture the essence of it here. But it reminded me of the great opportunity I will have as a teacher here to be a positive influence in the students’ lives. I am excited about being able to teach in a place where I can talk with students freely about the Lord.

Last night Las Chistosas won our volleyball game, 2 out of 3. Hooray! It was hard work- I’m really out of shape. Hopefully that will change soon. I also watched a men’s volleyball game- there is this team named Suzuki that is really good, they play like professionals. They played a team made up of some of our staff members last night. It was an exciting game. It’s nice to watch a team that has that much skill.