happy moments in a day

as usual cloudy gray moments pop up during a routine day at school; today was no exception, but there are the moments that make you incredibly happy to be a teacher.

1) reading: we do reading at JCS in small groups for grades (1-3) using leveled readers. I teach level B as of this week. I used to teach aa the 3rd lowest ability group and loved my kids. most of my kids were first and second graders with poor reading background so while they worked hard they still were struggling. i formed some good relationships with those students and miss them so much.

i did have two 3rd graders in that group as well; since they are older they advanced to level B with me (actually i chose level B because I wanted to stay with them). Joshua and Cristofer have made great progress and I wanted to continue supporting them and building their self-esteem. I am thankful to have them in my group yet again.

A) anyways, the point of this whole story is today at break I went to go say hi to my favorite little girl from my first reading group Lisleydi. Lisleydi is one of the happiest and joyfilled kids I've ever worked with; she always brings a smile to my face. and whenever you ask her how she is the answer is always "happy". today was no exception. I asked her how she liked her new teacher for reading and she said ok. then she said can i tell you something in spanish? [normally if they have something very important to say they want to say it in their own language...] so i said "i'll do my best to understand." Mrs. Williams es agradable, pero quiero estar en su clase otra vez Miss Jantzen. ¿Por favor? {Mrs. Williams is nice, but I want to be in your class again Miss Jantzen. Please?} I just about started crying...I was like hooray I'm actually making an impact on somebody's life while they may not even be in my class, somebody appreciates my teaching.

B)I also love hearing from other teachers that their kids come back to class happy after reading. Sometimes I feel like my reading lessons are a flop, but evidentally my activities are fun. I feel that they are occasionally tedious/repetitive, but then again learning to read is just that. I love it when kids rush up at lunch and say "I'm excited for reading tomorrow, are you going to read the Pigeon book to us?" "Can you read to us now?" I love that they are eager to learn.


2)walking to town
I love walking into town. I love seeing students outside of school and watching them process seeing their teachers outside of school. What they don't live at school? I remember that whole transtion of factual understanding in first and second grade.

I love running into people from the school and stopping to say hi and chat.

I secretly love carrying bags of groceries by myself in front of all the moto drivers and not taking a moto. It's fun to see how people react to a white girl carrying groceries up a hill and not really caring.

3) I love that it's December 4th and I'm wearing shorts and t-shirt.

3.5) I love that I have a half day tomorrow!!!!

4) I love that in 16 days at 7:30pm I'll be landing at O'Hare.

5) I love that in 27 days I'll be in Wheaton with El. Ed. friends

6) I love that in 28 days I'll be in Fort Wayne with my amazing 1L friends.

and in 31 days I'll be right back here in Jarabacoa...a lot of stuff can be crammed in a glorious 1 month span.

God is good and gracious and has provided me with enough grace and patience to survive the first 4 months of life abroad.

Santiago

Well I had my first Thanksgiving away from home and it was quite a unique experience, but it was a good experience nonetheless.

Yesterday, I had the chance to go to Santiago for a day of shopping and just to get out of Jarabacoa. It was a good but very expensive day, but then again I was able to get my Secret Angel shopping done and get some large quantities of staples.

My most exciting find came at PriceSmart aka Sam's Club/Costco I found 19 dry erase markers for about 70 cents a marker!!! I can now give my kids there own marker for Christmas Hooray!


Right now I'm writing this with Nola who is happily sleeping away on my lap...having a puppy in the house is such good therapy.

Mind Games

You know that feeling when you feel like your mind is playing games on you? I'm assuming most of you do and most of you understand that Satan loves to make us feel this way. I think Satan has been having a little bit too much fun in my brain as of late.

I am writing this after another tearful evening wrestling with God and what my purpose here is. From my neighbors smoking habits to my kids at school I often feel dejected & physically and emotionally unprepared to fight Satan's spiritual battles.

I am thankful that my time here has brought me closer to God and His truth, but I am saddened at what I can not do for my students...they must chose to follow God and obey. I can't just granted them obedience even though I wish I could.

My neighbors on the other hand get an assist for their nighttime recon into my brain thanks to their illegal smoking choices occasionally. Their smoke wafts in to my room where it gets stuck and makes me severely nauseated and keeps me up anticipating sleep and the day to come during which time I try and pray, but often find myself worrying about this or that; obviously not trusting God.

It is hard to think that I have been here for almost 4 months and what a time of growth and discovery it has been. I am constantly surrounded by God's beautiful creation, the glorious sun, and other people who have chose this endeavor too. We have that at least in common.

Being a self proclaimed OCD/busy bee it is hard for me to stop and be still. Something that God taught me about this past weekend when I got to house sit for one of my students with another teacher. My student lives about a 30 minute drive from school in a beautiful log cabin/dr. quinn medicine style cabin...a far cry from the cement house i live in here. It made me homesick for comfortable couches, TV, the library, and a bed without springs sticking out! But the most of all the time without phone or internet gave me time to think. It's uncomfortable for me to sit still because I'm constantly thinking of what I need to do (even now I'm writing a list of things to do tomorrow). But it was good...I had plenty of me time on Saturday when I woke up at 5am to cows moo-ing (techically lowing I think is the appropriate word), but regardless I had some quality thinking and praying time.

Prayer Requests:
I have 3 boys in my class who need serious love and attention. Please pray for guidance I try and show them this without encouraging their bad behavior.

Emotional Stamina - tears are frequent and unexplained most of the time

Physical Strength - praise I have not gotten severely sick, pray that my sleeping continues to improve (I wake up 4 times a night because of dreams or nasuea)

Relationships at the school. I need to do a better job of reaching out...I'm letting my language impediment stop me from conversations...I need to learn to laugh at myself.

Strange but true - one of the first graders' uncles was kidnapped and is being held for ransom (I believe $3,000,000 US). Anyways, Alexander misses his uncle alot. Pray for the family as this is difficult I'm sure (i've never personally known someone with family who had been kidnapped).

Praise:
my lack of sickness
our vonage phone - i've been able to talk ot dear friends in the states as well as my parents.

Saturday Night Live - DR style

Recently (as in 5 minutes ago), I was sitting on my roof listening to the sounds that make up Dominican Saturdays. At first it sounds an awful lot like chaos between the screaming kids playing in the street, to the pots and pans being clanked as they are cleaned after dinner, to the thumping bass of the colmado's radio behind our house, to the acoustic guitar player outside of our corner colmado. All this noise while the trees stir with the passing of the clouds over an extremely bright moon. It is moments like that in which I wish I could capture everything into a picture.

Nights are alive with the music of Dominican culture and it's nice to be a bystander to it all. To have the ability to absorb everything incognito from the safe distance of a rooftop. To be able to lie back and watch the stars and moon disappear from sight and reappear as the wind blows the clouds across a beautiful night sky.

I wish I could share the beauty of it all with more than just words, but that is all I have to offer.

Life Update...Complete with Pictures

Life Update…

I’ve been failing at blogging as of late…my apologies. I’m loving life most days and becoming increasingly frustrated on others. Let’s take a walk back down memory lane over the last 2 weeks.

2 Weeks Past: October 24^th-ish

October 24^th – Teacher work day aka compile grades and do report cards…fun times. Also an incuse to watch Facing the Giants as a staff; if you’ve never seen the movie you probably see it for the sheer entertainment factor…not necessarily the acting…just the entertainment.

That Sunday- Ariel Kelly at church…to most of you Ariel Kelly means nothing. He happens to be one of the many Christian Reggatone artists that have emerged in the past years. So church started normal with 30-40 minutes of decent praise and worship in a PACKED sanctuary (roughly the size of the Stuart Room plus the lower lobby (for my TU readers)). Then the awkwardness starts…some unknown person that is connect to Ariel Kelly gets up and does a mini-awkward opener. Then Ariel Kelly…rap/reggae for church…odd….but it’s one church experience I won’t forget.

28^th- Christy Elmer’s birthday…fantastic times of good restaurant food and S’mores on our roof…pre-stairs being completed.

30^th- stairs are complete

November 1^st – please see below photos…

Our new stairs and our beautiful house & the beautiful view.

AND a Dominican Sunrise photo...my favs of all my pics alway...

4^th – This begins the saga of the worst afternoon ever here at JCS in Rm 204.

1:10 – Yulissa our Spanish teacher and the MOST patient and loveable person ever is beside her self due to one of my student who hasn’t done his homework for 8 homeworks in a row. I myself am not please with this news but have to move on to teach…History begins. History goes well enough, I’m pleased…let’s move on to Language…here is where the tide turns…

2:15 After completing my review of synonyms and antonyms one of my students decides that he needs to put his lunch box away from under his desk. He decides to just yank on it not stopping to think that it could be stuck on the leg of his chair. After much huffing and puffing and drawing entirely too much attention to himself he completes his task. What you have to understand I have a very “laughable” class…they’ll laugh at anything…SUPER frustrating. Anyways, now that my two worst gigglers were going this boy got extremely upset; when I say extremely it is an understatement. In the process of my helping another student I see a pencil go flying through the air (007 knife throwing flying)…the pencil ends up in my nice newly painted drywall. Thankfully the pencil missed the intended target, but I know have a pencil stuck in my wall and a still very angry child, plus my heart is racing at what could have happened. So I take the time to walk the student all the way downstairs to the office. I come up stairs to inspect the damage to find that the pencil landed in the middle of another of my student’s names. The student decided that it would be a good idea to write his name on the wall…oops! He now is also in trouble losing his lunch play time to clean my walls. 10 minutes later we have all calmed down. I am still as jittery as before because I’m still thinking of what could have happened. I decide that that best way to calm myself down is to read aloud to the kids. My kids are huge fans of the Pigeon series (thanks Dr. Quinn for hooking us on them Jr. year) so we read Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus…voices and student read alouds too.

2:25

At the end as we are heading back to our seats to do our math (only 30 teaching minutes left in my day) a jacket is swung through the air by one of my free spirited students. Only problem is the zipper of the jacket hits of my kids on the head…the student it hit tends to be somewhat of a complainer so they started crying…I thought nothing of it until about a minute later when I asked him to come to his seat. When he got up I noticed the line of blood running down his face and the small puddle of blood on the floor. Hitting panic mode now I rush to the child and walk him down stairs along with the child who hit him in the head. The time now is 2:35…in the past 15 minutes I have had a pencil thrown at my wall and had a child have his head busted open by a zipper…being one who doesn’t react well to this much surprise I was doing my best to keep my panic under control. Thankful I made it through the rest of my day.

Thus concludes the majority of my adventures. I am babysitting tomorrow night…bonus. Sad news I have Saturday school detention supervision on Saturday (obviously) …good news I’m a morning person anyways. Sorry if the formatting is strange I stopped trying to make it look nice.

welcome to the 60s...

It has finally reached 60 degreesish in the evenings here in the DR!!! :) warm days and cool nights what a lovely combination.

I am super excited for the wonderful break from swealtering heat. Granted I still lose plenty of water out the old sweat glands during the day outside in the sun.

This week starts parent/teacher conferences....yikes! I've never done one of these before so thankfully I have a nice family first. I'm hoping that all of them go smoothly and that I can learn more about each of my students.

I have discovered first grade as it should be again...not the bad memories I had from last year but fun loving, cute first graders who love you because you carry them around or give them a high five. Getting swarmed by the first graders brings a huge smile to my face and I love it and them. I love the surprise hugs and the surprise kisses that find themselves on my cheeks when I stop to talk another teacher.

Life as I Know It

My real life consists of crazy adventures during the day and crazy adventures during the evening too.

This morning was a hoot starting from 8:40 this morning during Bible. I should have seen it coming but I didn't. A discussion on sin can't exist without talking about the Garden of Eden...enough said. And then my kids were just crazy wild today so lots of strange things were said the rest of the morning.

Then I helped Natalie's class paper-machete their reading projects. Flour and water with fourth graders very amusing.

Also, I came home today to find our landlord building us stairs to our roof!