Over the Easter weekend I went away with the youth from church on an Easter retreat. Please note that "youth" here means everyone between the ages of about 13 and 30. I thought it was pretty cool for the teenagers to be getting that really close relationship with lots of older people. And the older people get to spend more time acting like teenagers! We didn't go far, just out to one of the southern suburbs and stayed at a church camp. In some ways the camp was like one I'd go to at home and in some ways it was very different. I couldn't help but be very aware of the relaxed time attitude. They'd tell us to be somewhere at a certain time but you could be sure that nothing was really going to happen for at least half an hour to an hour after that time! It did mean that we were still going at 1am most nights and as most of you will know, I'm not great at the time of the night. But we played silly games and I got to meet lots of new people and I'm finally starting to feel like I might be fitting in. I met one girl who has just come back from a year in NZ so it was nice to have someone who is as excited about my country as I am. I'm hopefully hanging out with her on Saturday. Friends is one of the things I've been really missing and thanks for everyone's prayers about this. I think I might finally be making some! Sorry but I forgot my camera so no photos from camp except this one. The theme for camp was love and there was a photo competition to see who could take the most creative picture depicting love. And this one won, pretty cool huh?
School is well and truly settling down into a routine and I'm no longer completely lost as to what is happening during the day. I've had a couple of frustrating moments with the bus when they refuse to stop for me but I'm not sure what I can do about that! Only happens about once a week. Part of my work at school now includes cleaning the dining room after breakfast and lunch which is my quiet times of the day. I quite enjoy my time sweeping the floor, although I'm not sure my back agrees! Usually in the morning we do some sort of reading/language type thing and the kids draw something in response to the lesson. After they've finished I write up the headings for the next day so that the teachers don't have to do it at night. During play time I get an upper body workout helping kids on the monkey bars and just general playing around. They loved to be picked up and swung around or helped to climb a post or helped down the pole. But I definitely am getting some arm muscles!
On Tuesday I taught my first set of English classes. A bit nerve-wracking but I think it went okay. Perhaps a little too much vocab all at once for the 4 year olds and the activity I had for the 5 and 6 year olds was also tricky for them. But I live and learn and have just finished planning for next week. This month the focus is on learning the different parts of the body so I can see the "head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes" song making an appearance. Finally took some pictures for you at school so I hope you all enjoy them.
Please keep all your lovely emails and comments coming. I really appreciate hearing from people at home and it's great to keep tabs on what all you fantastic people are doing too!
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| PE in the courtyard (learning the difference between tall and short) |
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| Classroom for the 4 year olds |
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| Tia (means aunty) Abigail at storytime |
In Ecuador often if people said an event was at 6pm, that was when people started getting ready to leave for that event. But other times it was 6 en punto. :-)
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