This has been a great week. Life is good. God is faithful.
There were certainly aspects of this week that made me tempted to pull my hair out (certain students doing - or not doing - and saying certain things...fellow teachers, you know what I'm talking about); however, it was a great week on the whole. I had a nice chat with my principal after he observed me late last week. It was very encouraging and quite affirming to me. It reminds me how much I love my job and how blessed I am to be working with the staff I'm working with. I definitely feel much more comfortable talking with staff members and sharing more of myself with them. I'm definitely starting to feel a sense of community out here...slowly, but surely.
Another great thing that I've come to look forward to every week is our Thursday night Bible study with 6 other young couples besides ourselves (one couple just had their 3rd baby, so they haven't attended for the last couple weeks - to be expected). Each week, we study one chapter in Romans and discuss various aspects that either make/have made a large impact in our lives, things we never realized were in the passage, or things we have studied before with regards to the passage and continue to learn and grow from within the larger context of the whole Bible. Although we have some differing interpretations of scripture, we are building a community of friends and brothers and sisters in Christ. It is exciting and, the longer we meet together, the more comfortable we feel with each other and the more often we end up laughing.
Friday night, we had game night with the clan - I haven't laughed that hard in a very long time. We ate dinner and dessert (3 different pizzas from Papa Murphy's , avocado and chicken dip with crackers, chips, chocolate, Christmas cookies, banquet, etc, etc, etc) and then played about 5 different games, among them: Mafia, Catch Phrase, and telephone pictionary. One of my new favorite games that I had never played prior to Friday night is telephone pictionary (which, family, we should play around Christmas - it'd be fun!). The concept is you have about 7 pieces of paper stacked on top of each other (labeled from 1-7). The first person writes a phrase down (can be anything from a movie quote to something you made up in your head); the stack of papers is passed to person #2 who then has to interpret the phrase through drawing it on the second piece of paper. Person #2 then passes the stack to person #3 who just looks at the picture (not the first sentence) and has to interpret the drawing into a phrase...it goes on until the end and then everyone looks at the different quotes to see how they changed as they were passed along. I wrote the phrase: "Brothers don't shake hands, brothers gotta hug!" (a well-quoted line from one of my favorite movies - if you don't know what it is, I'm a little personally offended). As it was passed down, the drawings and phrases got pretty graphic with sexual undertones to it, if you know what I mean. Not all of the phrases changed that drastically, but needless to say, we were all laughing when the phrases were revealed. :)
Today it's Sunday and a friend from Guatemala - Gari (Gary) - is visiting! He has been studying at a college in Michigan and is visiting us for the holidays. We got to talk with him a bit this morning at church and he may be staying at our house. Kent and I are excited to have him here and to catch up on what has been going on in each other's lives!
More to come...but right now, this teacher has to get a pile of grading done...yippee.
After a very long week before Christmas break with students bouncing off the walls, Kent and I finally made our way back to Michigan to spend Christmas with my family. It was and still is SOOO good to see them and hug them and talk with them in person.
