Final activity for 2009!

Enjoy a few pictures of our special evening!!!

 Thanks a bunch to a group of parents who worked hard to make the place look nice.

One out of seven of the K graduates making her entrance

The Kindergarten class of 2009!

Every grade receives a certificate for passing/completing the grade . . . Yay for the 1st graders!!

2nd grade!

And the small class of 3rd grade!

In addition to graduation, we passed out the awards. This precious girl received the “student of the year” award.

1st and 2nd place for GPA in the Kindergarten class.

Three brothers managed to walk off with 1st or 2nd place GPA. The two beside me were in the lower learning center (1st-3rd grades) and the one in front was in Kindergarten. The two older boys were extremely close . . . 99.71% and 99.65%. They’re smart little guys!

Want a new tradition?

A month or so ago I was privileged to experience, for the first time, a Guatemalan birthday tradition.  I’m beginning to think that I’ve missed out all these years . . . hah! There have been several times that I’ve been awakened, early in the morning, to the sound of firecrackers and wondered who in their right mind would be setting them off at such a time of day. Come to find out, they were celebrating a birthday. You see, it’s a tradition down here to get up extremely early in the morning, go to the house of the one who’s celebrating the birthday, set off firecrackers and start singing. I thought it ended there, but I was wrong. You then proceed to have a party at 4:30, 5:00, 5:30, etc. in the morning. Sometimes they will bring the food and sometimes they expect you to feed the crowd that shows up to celebrate with you.

A few of our neighbors came to Sis. Rickenbach on a Saturday night and told her they wanted to come and sing and then have a party for Bro. Rickenbach, bright and early Monday morning. Bro. Rickenbach is a morning person, so, in order to surprise him, it had to be early. The time was set for 4:45 AM. At 4:35, I heard the firecrackers begin. A few short seconds later the music started. The rest of us managed to get up and join the celebration. I would say 10-15 people, mostly young people, showed up to enjoy the celebration. We ate potato tamales with muffins (supposed to have been a cake, but on such short notice, the cake didn’t happen) and juice. Definitely my first time to eat a tamale for breakfast. Within an hour, they had left and I laid back down for a nap before facing the day.  Later on that night, we celebrated the American way with a nice birthday supper

It definitely is an interesting tradition and a unique way to show your love and appreciation for others.  Just thought some of you might be looking for a special way to show that special someone how much they are appreciated . . . haha!

 

This little friend made sure that I was up and planning on joining them for the celebration. Such a sweet girl!

Walking in a winter wonderland . . .

OK, so, it really wasn’t a winter wonderland, but when you don’t have snow you can try to imagine that it is one. For now, we will call it a “Guatemalan winter wonderland.” Snow, or the lack thereof, really didn’t have anything to do with this crazy, but fun, activity.  You see, we are required to destroy all used materials at the end of the year. 24 students X approximately 40-80 PACE’s per student = a lot of work. So, we decided that we could majorly use the 24 extra sets of hands to save us a TON of work.  A paper shredder would be nice, but it doesn’t really fit into the budget at the moment. So, the pages were wadded up into a ball and will eventually be burned. The students had a blast – from “snowball” fights to making a big pile and jumping into it! They especially loved it when their teachers got involved in the “fights.”

 I told them that we do the same thing in the states with real snow. Someone spoke up and said that I needed to bring some snow back to Guatemala. They’re too cute! Enjoy a few pictures and videos (Video warning: TURN DOWN YOUR VOLUME. The girls definitely have a good set of lungs.) of one of our final activities of the school year.

It started off like this . . .

Taking a break?!?

And looked like this on the final day . . . all the garbage bags were emptied and the mountain was created.

 

It was fun . . . until it was time to clean up.

 Big enough bag?!?

A smile for the day!

Yay! I’m so happy. The lost has finally been found – my camera cord. I can now post about some of the recent happenings and include pictures to go along with the post. I must warn those of you who read my blog and receive my newsletters . . . you may see some of this stuff again in my newsletter. Please forgive me, but I need all the good stuff I can get to put in my newsletter. And if I don’t update my blog, well,  some of you are kind enough to let me know. Anyway, enjoy a peek into a “bilingual” classroom.

 One of the things I enjoy about teaching in a bilingual classroom is listening and watching as the students slowly began to learn new words, phrases and eventually began to put sentences together.  The beginning of the year started off with “spanglish” (Spanish and English) sentences:

~ puedo ir a bathroom?

~ puedo ir a wash my hands?

 ~ puedo read un book?

And the list goes on.

Towards the middle of the year some of them began being a little more adventurous and started to put more English into practice. I was actually surprised when one of the students came to me one day and perfectly asked in English “Can I play with Daniel?” (he even said the other students name in English) Yes, they are learning and making progress every day. Supposedly, there will be a rule next year that the older students are only allowed to speak English while at school. One student quickly spoke up and said if that is the case they wouldn’t speak all day. Hah! That will be the day.

 Anyway, the reason for this post was to share with you a few of the amusing mistakes they’ve made in their attempts to speak English (I’m laughing with them because I know I’ve made some mistakes in Spanish that are just as funny).

~ May I wash YOUR hands?

~ May I throw away my bathroom?

~ My favorite one of all happened the other day. A student was reciting/reading the scripture verse found in her PACE – II Corinthians 4:2. According to this student: “It is required that a man be found BEAUTIFUL.” I managed to keep a straight face while I corrected her, but found myself laughing several times throughout the day as I thought back to that moment.

I know . . . I took it the wrong way. Sorry! But it was too cute not to post. We were playing a game and he had to sing a song in English with the motions. He did a great job, especially since it was impromptu. Another student was required to recite a Scripture verse from memory in English. He took it a step further and recited the whole passage, but I didn’t manage to record that one.

Other news: We began our final week of the 2009 school year today. FOUR MORE DAYS TO GO!!! 4 more days = one busy week (with graduation/awards ceremony being the final activity Friday evening).

Happy Birthday . . . to Guatemala!

The Independence day for Guatemala was celebrated today (Sept. 15th). I didn’t necessarily celebrate, just enjoyed a quiet day at home. One of the traditions is to have three or four parades (one a day) leading up to the holiday. The parades are held for the schools only. Our grade levels were scheduled to march on Sunday, but, obviously, we said we would not go on Sunday. So, they allowed for us to join a different group on Monday. We were placed at the very end . . . saved the best for last

To be honest, I was kind of dreading the thought of riding through town with hundreds of people looking at us, but I realized what a great opportunity we had to let our “lights” shine as we rode through town singing our songs. We sang: “Oh, for a thousand tongues“ (in Spanish), “Teach me, Lord,” “Oh, be careful little eyes . . . ” (with all the motions), and “A, B, C, D, E, F, G . . . Jesus died for you and me” (too bad that song was in English and most of our audience probably didn’t understand the wonderful truth of what we were singing - Jesus died for them!).

By the time it was all said and done, I had to say that it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I had a good time being with the students in a setting outside of class. The students, on the other hand, seemed to be a little nervous, tired, bored . . . you name it! I found myself repeating multiple times ”Smile . . . happy faces . . . the people are looking at you, etc.” My efforts lasted for a while, but the ”serious” faces quickly re-appeared. It could have been the fact that the sun was shining down upon us and we were singing the same four songs over and over again for two hours. So, considering those two factors, they did really well.

All ready to go!

I happened to catch a few videos while they were singing. Quite hilarious what you will see . . . let’s just say some of them were really into it, others were just there because, while a few of them were off in “la la” land and more than ready to be finished.

I don’t know about you, but they make me smile!

Enjoying cookies and juice afterwards.

Not just a few . . .

but all twenty-four students were honored at a special service for maintaining, up to this point, a grade point average of 95% or above. It is a tradition to honor the students, who meet certain qualifications, in a special service a few days before the parades (see next post) begin. The students, who meet the qualifications, are called to the front and a special “ribbon” is placed on them by their parents. The ”ribbon” will then be worn during the parade.

We were “proud” (in a godly way) to honor each student. It was all I could do to keep the tears away as I watched the students, especially a few of them, receive their “award.” One little boy in particular has some physical problems which makes studying a little more difficult.  His first couple of years in the public school were a time to play - the teachers weren’t prepared or qualified to handle him so they simply sent him outside to play. When he began the year at CEBE, one of his favorite questions to ask was “when do I get to play?” I think he finally realized that things were different and being at school now meant that he had to study. His parents told us that he normally hasn’t made it this far in the school year because he couldn’t handle it, so they pulled him out. We are thankful for how God has helped him to keep going . . . He has worked extremely hard and made beautiful progress throughout the year. I know that God has a special plan for this young boy! Enjoy a few pictures of the service.

I love the look on her face as she looks up at her daddy . . .

Such a special moment!

He sure does love his big brother! 

What a beautiful group of students!!

A special picture with his teachers!