After a week of lots of relaxing and catching up on a lot of those little projects that had been staring me in the face for way too long, I felt rejuvenated and ready to see the kids again. The morning hugs were executed with some extra "umph!"
I was kinda a bad teacher today. We really didn't do much work at all. We sat around and talked about what we did on vacation. And ate chocolate and laughed at the Dove sayings. How do you translate the idea of, "Pack your rose colored glasses." I just translated it literally and then we teased Beatriz about her pink sunglasses all day.
We also mourned the loss of our dear class pet. Diego seems to have escaped/been kidnapped during vacation. The girls were quite traumatized while Eduardo openly rejoiced and asked if someone had stabbed him dead. (He never had a great love for the bird!)
RIP Diego, wherever you might be. Thank you for never pooping on me.
It was great to sit around and catch up on their lives. And I nearly cried when it came Beatriz' turn to tell us about her vacation. (If that confuses you, check out my last post, "Once again a student) she was all smiles! And she said she had a great vacation! Her mom was rather upset when she arrived Friday afternoon, but ended up apologizing a day or so later was her normal self for the rest of the week. And her dad wasn't mad at all, although he did drink and got into a rather major fight. He didn't mistreat her. How wrong is that? To have only one major fight be an "improvement" and something to be thankful for. But it really is, for her. And Sunday her dad even took her to the Mennonite church that is close to her house. (Close as in E.S. close, not Lancaster County close!) he was chopping some grass for the cows close by so when she asked to go along he didn't have any problem with it and took her on his bike. I sat on my desk as she recalled all this to our class! And I just wanted to do a happy dance! We settled for thanking God for so many answered prayers on behalf of this girl that He cares about more than I can ever imagine.
And specifics about my vacation . . .
It was honestly just a lot of relaxing! :) Blissful to say the least! I spent a few days at the guesthouse in San Salvador and caught up on some shopping at the mall there. I managed to fit in a massage and also found some cool new smoothie shops and also discovered that the roof of the guesthouse is a great viewing platform to see the firework displays the city likes to put on to celebrate August vacation. I was also blessed to be able to catch lunch with a very wise woman and dear friend, who very patiently let me unload to her! Wednesday afternoon I bussed home from the city, and Lidia informed me that they were planning to go to a Water park the next day and I was invited to tag along. ("They," being her two sisters that are here visiting.) that seemed a little more appealing than the cleaning that I had on my schedule and so we set off. I was expecting a few slides and some dirtyish pools. Since that's kinda been my "water park" experience here. I was quite surprised! A very upscale park with thermal pools, ginormous kids section, and a nice assortment of slides, and pools of different depths, even a zip line cable stretching over the pools. Sadly, jumping off the zip line into the pool was not allowed. But the ginormous yellow slide provided quite enough thrill for me.
Not sure exactly how tall it was, but very much straight down! Good belly-flopping/heart-in-throat experience right there!
Finishing off with some good ole cones!
And the rest of the week was sewing and reading and sleeping in and some long over-due cleaning.
Today while working at school it hit me for real that we are past the three month mark.
And if these last three months go anywhere near as fast as the last 6 I'll be back in the states before I even know what happened.
This week we're looking forward to Nata & Becky coming back from Mexico. Life just isn't quite normal when they aren't here. However we had an amazing time with Enrique & Laura here and Lidia & Patu will definitely miss their family, especially their nephew who has stolen all our hearts. I'm also looking forward to my first visitors of the year! Wow! I waited till August! My uncle & aunt, Dan & Naomi, who live about three miles from my house in WV, are coming on Thursday with their two youngest, the only ones who haven't made it down here to visit me yet. Makes me feel quite special and I look forward to showing them around.
Till next time . . .
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