January was very active and a great learning experience for me. We had a great time while on winter break, but all things end that comes by the hands of man and this was one of those things. After I returned from all my gallivanting about the country, I had two days to be back into teaching mode, complete with lesson plans, collared shirts and rested personalities primed and prepped for the classroom. The first week back, the time you would think the rebellions would be planned for, actually were pretty devoid of uprisings. The kids took coming back to school in stride and we had nice first week.
We also had a lady named Cindy, from the fine stare of Florida, who came for a week to get a feel for the place. She is thinking about coming to teach this upcoming year and wanted to get hands of feel for the ministry. I wasn’t able to be get to know her very well, on account that while she was here, I was in Montebello getting trained up and learning some of the tricks of the teacher trade. However, everyone I talked to on my return to the jungle told me that she was a fine lady.
Darin and I practically made a land speed record on our trip from here to Quito when we made it in just three hours and fifteen minutes, a trip that will normally takes just around hours in a private car and somewhere close to a bit more than five hours by bus. I stayed at the Roselands house, who have become a large part of my patchwork Ecuadorian family. I was there for a week and attended all five days of school, watching, absorbing and hopefully, retaining. It was a great to be able to take a break from teaching in the jungle and learn some new things along with getting a change of pace. There was not an hour of the day that I did not have someone who I was supposed to be watching, shuffling to a new class almost every period. I was able to brush up on power teaching, about controlling the energy of the class room and overall how to be a better teacher. Actually, it was really the first ever training that I had received for being a school teacher. However, we did run into some difficulty, while I was there, the Roseland’s land cruiser’s radiator decided to kick the bucket, and then Richard got sick. So that meant that Gustavo and I had to take the bus/walk to school, and when we did arrive at school, there was no sub to take over some of his classes. However, the Lord works in all things, and one of the classes that I had seen done several times was the math class. I ended up subbing for one of the other teachers, who went to teach Richards class. The class went pretty good overall, especially for being worked out what was happening fifteen minutes before that class started. Also that evening I was able to go out with some of the teachers from school for dinner and just spending time together, we ended up eating a Chinese food joint and had a great time. The night was full of fun, laughter and fellowship.
Sadly while I was in Quito I missed several of the kid’s birthdays. We have three of them all grouped together in the same part of the month of January.
Robbie has integrated nicely into the family we have seen great improvements as far as confidence and personality. When he showed up at the end of December, he was a shy sad looking child. However, there has been a night and day change from who he was. He has a killer smile, twinkling eyes and we look forward to seeing what God will be doing in his life in the future.
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