nose-deep in the first month of school

We’ve got four weeks of school behind us already. That only leaves approximately 32 to go. Not that I’m counting! I’m more amazed. This month has FLOWN by. Time flies when you’re having fun, and when you’re too busy to think about the time on the clock or the date of the calendar.

Truth be told, there have been moments in the past few weeks when I just felt completely overwhelmed.  I have to learn the names of over 200 students, and seriously? Little kids all look the same. Especially if they have a brother or sister in a consecutive grade. So many Daniels, Marias, Joshuas, Josephs, Marys, Davids, Johns, Christinas and Sarahs. 

The weird names are easier to pick up. Aoife? Ma Yan? Alezis? Anushka? Jericho? Praise? Hosanna? It requires more thinking and sticks out from the rest. (PS. Aoife is pronounced “ee-fah”)

I’m trying to keep the NorthStar program organized. Trying to collect all of their work at the right time and keep them from getting too far behind! Trying to show them how to do their very best. Trying to get them to take responsibility for their own learning.
 Trying to organize fun, interesting, useful lessons for the students in Art class.  It’s an elective, and it’s main goal is to keep their child-like creativity and to learn basic skills. I have to keep reminding myself that I’m not in High School anymore! They are all artists when they are 6 and 7.

But I’m not a trained elementary school teacher, and when you have 23 7-year-olds in a classroom, it’s hard to figure out who and what to keep on top of. I have on girl who I’m pretty sure is legally blind…or pretty darn close to it. She will probably learn the most in this class, IF I can keep the others occupied long enough to help HER.  One-on-one attention would be way better. Sadly, they don’t have an assistant anymore. So I’ll keep an extra eye on that one.

I’m exhausted, but it’s a good kind of exhaustion. Last night we had our first Girls’ Bible Study for the year, and it was a pool party! After 5 long days of school, we still had enough energy to swim for an hour and eat pizza and cookies and laugh. A LOT. Turns out, I’m a terrible influence on these kids…organizing a group cannonball jump, hooking the noodle up to the jet so that it shoots water across the pool (which is just an intro to physics…squeeze the end of the noodle and it goes farther), encouraging chicken wars and many other ways of splashing your neighbour.  It was so much fun.  We had all the energy we needed!

Once I got home last night, I made the mistake of lying down on my bed, fully clothed, contacts in…and it took every last ounce of self-discipline that I had to get up again.

The diem was totally carpéd!

¹¹ The LORD will guide you always;
       he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
       and will strengthen your frame.
       You will be like a well-watered garden,
       like a spring whose waters never fail.

Isaiah 58:11

Janneke

Almost one month after arriving in Kuwait, I finally have a car that I can call my very own!  It took nearly 2 weeks to prepare (because of Ramadan hours), but yesterday after school, I arrived at the dealership to find my car there, parked inside! Squeaky clean on the inside, sparkly clean on the outside, absolutely beautiful.

This next picture is of Janneke the first day I saw her. She was just Dusty-Grey-Car-with-the-good-engine-and-the-so-called-fancy-rims at that point. Macky, my Filipino brother, and Kamal, the sales guy, insisted that it was a good car. We didn’t even test drive it!

I went back that night to deliver paperwork. She was still there in the parking lot, still filthy, still just a big, grey car.

But now? Washed. Detailed. Brand new, fully aligned tires. And yes, the rims actually ARE beautiful. The dealer had to explain to me why they were such a good upgrade, but now I see it.

I drove her down south to Mahboula last night, and she drives like a DREAM. Unlike the Peugeot that felt like it was going 120 when it was going 80, this one is the opposite. It feels like it’s going 80 when I’m actually going 120, so I’ll have to be extra careful watching the speedometer.  Like all the cars here, it beeps after 120km/hr, but…some of the major roads have a limit of 100, or even 80.  I did semi-alright today following the speed laws :)

The shocks are like driving on moonboots. The steering is calm and easy. The air conditioning works fast and cold! The radio has clear sound. I could go on and on, but I won’t.

Except…I’ll admit that I’ve done a little light reading…the owner’s manual is surprisingly interesting! (Come on, it’s my very first car…or, it will be mine after “24 easy payments of 90KD”…I’ve got to know how to keep her as nice as possible!)

I’m still shaking my head in amazement and lifting my hands to the sky in praise. I feel like the princess that I am, totally spoiled by the King. Not because I deserve it, but because He’s so very gracious.

I named her Janneke because it means “God’s Gift” in Dutch. I never could have had her any other way.

middle school

I am slowly learning what it means to teach Middle School.  It’s not a whole new ballgame, it’s still in the same ballpark, but there are different teams playing and they certainly have different strengths and weaknesses.  And their goal is still to get the fastballs by us, whether they realize it or not.  Fastballs, spitballs, curveballs…it’s a good thing I can’t strike out!

The students have to type their math answers onto the computer and them send them to me (for the special program that we use). I then send them to their “real” teacher, who marks them and sends them back.  I didn’t realize that the 6th grade kids wouldn’t know to coincide the question number from the textbook with the answer number on their answer sheet.

Seriously.

Learning experience!

Also, the seventh and eighth graders have laptops for their classes. The seventh grade boys have installed “fart” buttons on their desktops. It looks like the Staples “Easy” Button, it just says “FART” and makes a lovely sound.

It was all the rage during study hall today.  Fortunately, the other Ms. Katie and I aren’t entirely put off by fart sounds and we may even have the Atomic Fart on our iPods…so I think there’s a reason that Middle School appeals to us so much!

I love it.

My fifth graders were AMAZED by the optical illusions that I brought in to show the 6th graders (who also found them sooo cool!).  It’s the little things. I love their smiles.

Thursday is a holiday. As is Sunday. Eid Mubarak!! It’s going to be busy, and that’s the way I like it.

Tonight is the Night of Power at church. Tomorrow, I get a new car! Dinner with my former coworkers on Thursday, Church on Friday, Breakfast out on Saturday…

Is this living or what?

my very first car!

Can you believe that at 26 I've never owned my own car?  I know, it's pathetic, but it's true.  My parents are great and provided me with a car when I was in high school and during my final two years at university (not while at Dalhousie...the bribe deal was that I could have a car if I went to university in Ontario).

Last year, my friend and I co-leased a car for the year.  And this year, I was going to do the same thing, but so far, has not worked out. Which is good, because I'm currently renting a Toyota Yaris, and I don't like it much at all.  It's pretty gutless.

So I was looking on expatriates.com and I found someone selling their dark purple 2007 Mazda 3 Sport. I contacted him and we finally met a few days ago.  I wrote about the help I received from Pastor Keith and Brother Macky.  Today when I went to the Mazda shop to meet with him and get it checked out, he never showed up. Since I had the day off, we went over to the used car salesroom at Mazda.

I saw a beautiful, sparkly, turquoise Mazda 6 and fell in love. Sadly, it was not the better car...the better car was the dusty silver Mazda 6 outside with the 2.3L engine and fancy rims.  Of course, when we looked closer at the blue-green car with the 2.0L engine and the boring rims, you could see that it had been painted and there was silver spots through the paint ;)

Macky, who is 100% Filipino, managed to talk the dealer down. "I'm Egyptian, too," he said, in Arabic. The dealer ended up dropping the price by 200KD. By the grace of God, I have a large chunk to put down as a down payment. Which leaves a smaller chunk for installents. I'll have it paid off in 2 years.  I think I can handle that!  (1KD = ~$3.60 CAD, so 200KD is still better than a kick in the pants!) 

They prayed for me in devotions (I missed it today, I had morning duty watching the kids), and Macky said a few prayers before leaving and again when we left to go back to the church compound. (I found out why we also prayed for safety before driving...he drives like a local!!  He would have been insanely bored if he'd let me drive...)

I think I've been shocked and amazed more times in the past 2 weeks than I can possibly count.

Now that I have the family car, it's time to find the family... ;)

And the way God has been providing lately, just you wait and see!!

indescribable

May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ
and the love of God the Father
and the fellowship, the fellowship
of the Holy Spirit be with you
forever more and ever more and ever more
Amen!!

That’s the song that we sing to each other every morning just before we leave staff devotions and head down to pick up our students from the courtyard.

Staff devotions.

Instead of arriving at school every morning and moaning and complaining about how tired we are or how much work we have to do or dreading the behaviour of our next class, we gather together and we praise Him: singing, clapping, dancing, laughing, smiling, joking, sharing.  We study the Bible and we pray.  Then we sing “our song” as they like to call it, while holding hands in a circle. It may sound a little fruity, but it’s the BEST way to start the day. 

Because after that, we’re calm and positive when we go to pick up our students from the courtyard.  We’re in one accord.

And once we get settled into our classroom, we start devotions with our students. 

They say the pledges followed by (my personal favourite):

This is my Bible.
I am what it says I am.
I can do what it says I can do.
I can be what it says I can be.
I can go where it says I can go.
This is the Word of God to my life and I will serve God.
I will love Jesus.
I will read His Word.
I will keep it close to my heart all the days of my life.

I make them hold their Bible while they say that one ;)

And we sing and we pray all together.  And we study our Scripture Memory (this month it’s Psalm 97:1-6…our God is awesome-ly POWERFUL!).

And then we’ll start our lesson.  We haven’t started any lessons yet because during Ramadan hours we only have 30 minutes of Bible class and so far, devotions takes up 15 minutes, and learning our Scripture Memory takes up 10 minutes, and checking their homework books and doing other duties fills in the final 5, and then I’m off to another class. 

The days have been so busy, that although they go very, very quickly, it still feels as though we’ve already been in school for 2 weeks instead of only 3 days!

Today I had after school duty, and one little girl didn’t get picked up until much later than the other kids. So we sat in the office and I read her a couple of storybooks from the library. She’s 7, but with the accent and her height, she could easily pass for 5. And I think she recently learned the word “actually”, because it was in every sentence she said!!  It made me miss Arden and Carlie, hanging out with a little Arab version of them.

I have been overwhelmed by a flood of blessings these last few weeks (and days, in particular!!), and when I get a few more details, I’ll let you know.

But yes, I will have a legal visa through the church in the next couple of weeks. Isn’t that AWESOME? (I’ve said and thought this a MILLION times in the past 3 days. And I doubt I’m exaggerating by much!!)

God’s been telling me, “I TOLD you so!!” for the past couple of days, and I keep reminding Him how absolutely ridiculous He is. Absolutely ridiculously amazing.

 

¹⁶I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:16-19)