Thanksgiving

This week has consisted a lot of getting ready for Thanksgiving and getting ready for our Christmas program that is coming up. I am making stockings with my students that they can put up in their house. I don't think any of my students will have Christmas trees but at least they will have a stocking. This weekend I get my first taste of American food in about 3 months. We are going to Tegus for the weekend and I think pretty much everything is paid for so I am pretty excited about that. We get to hang out with the administration of the school for the long weekend. We have also had a ton of rain here lately so the roads are really bad right now and getting to many different places just takes a lot of time if you want to use a car. I also got to experience a quincinera (sp?) party which is when a girl turns 15 and it was pretty cool. I didn't really know the girl at all but it is always fun trying to speak in Spanish to all the people sitting around me. Well I think that is all. It is almost Thanksgiving and in a little over 3 weeks I will be home which is quite crazy to think about. Specially since I haven't been home since May.

Parent Teacher Conferences

I just had my first round of parent teacher conferences and it went well. It was interesting meeting the parents and trying to communicate with them as best I could with the help of another teacher. You can see where a lot of the kids get their personalities. What was interesting is that for some of the people they could not even write their own names. We had to write their names for them. That is one that I am really not used to seeing. Also it is crazy to hear how many parents of the struggling kids say all they do is watch television all night and then tell me how they are going to start giving them vitamins so they will get better grades. Vitamins are not a bad idea but I don’t think that is going to cure your daughter who is watching television or has dyslexia and really just needs a special teacher just for her. There were no parents who said anything negative about my teaching and were grateful overall that I was there so that was nice.

What was sad is that I have a lot of sponsored students in my class which means that they are very poor and someone else is paying their tuition for them. Now in some cases but not all cases these students sometimes have trouble getting homework in on time or just don’t study. Sometimes I struggle to figure out why this is the case and why they don’t try harder since they have such a great opportunity. Well I have come to the conclusion that for one 5^th graders aren’t exactly looking ahead for their future as adults and really just want to play soccer everyday. The other case is that some of these parents didn’t even care enough to come in and pick up their son or daughters report card and talk to me. So I am sure they don’t exactly pay much attention to whether or not their son or daughter is doing their homework. When I was in fifth grade I probably wouldn’t have done my homework if no one pushed me to do it. Now, even if a student doesn’t do homework it doesn’t mean they aren’t learning. Every student in my class has a pretty good grasp on English and most subjects. Even if they get poor grades and don’t try very hard they are at least given the option of a life different from their parents who may not even know how to write their own name.

One last note is that in just a little over a month I will be back home for a couple weeks for my brothers wedding and to celebrate Christmas. I am quite excited to see some English speaking people. Dios Bendiga

P.S Since writing this post I just had a family at my church give the school a lot of money and we are going to be able to buy a whole lot for the school and everyone here is just extremely happy about it since the kids don't have a lot of the luxuries that we have in American schools. God is awesome

Its been a while

It has been a little while since my last update. Right now we are in the middle of an absolutely crazy time in the week. We have to have all of our grades in and get ready for our Christmas program which is quite an undertaking and involves me having to teach my students to dance. It should be exciting.

Just to finish the last blog and update on what actually happened. The girl is alright and it ended up one of the girls brothers was actually setting fire to her and then claiming it was her. He even set fire to himself. But I guess while the pastors were praying over the girl they felt the Holy Spirit say that it was the boy who was doing it and he confessed to it all. It is a crazy story and I don't know how all these things happen exactly.

We also had a tipica festival last weekend which involved lots of dancing, singing and eating food. It was a fund raiser for our school and we did really well so everyone was pretty happy about it all.

Today I only taught two classes for a variety of reasons so I have felt like a big slacker but I have been able to get a lot of work done as well. I will hopefully update more later and put up some pictures.

A scary sick note

So when you can't make it to school you need to have someone bring a note for you so you don't get marked with an unexcused absence. Well today we got a sick note from one of our seventh graders. Today the sick note that came in was not normal in any way shape or form. Witchcraft here is something that does take place and is not unusual in some circles from what I have heard. The note today said that one of our students was attacked with witchcraft and is according to the note burning. The burning is not physically hurting her but it sets things on fire whenever she gets close to them. I guess the mom ran out of her house scared and they tried to bring the girl to a different house because they thought it was just the house but then the student set things on fire in the next house as well. I guess when the mom ran out they ran to the pastors in the community one of which is the man I live with so I am sure I will hear more about it later but it is something so far out of what I consider normal I don't even know what to think about it. I had a teacher once who said that the devil targets the poor and this would be another case of it. I guess all I can say is pray for this student because I can't even really imagine what is going on.