Feeling Fruuuustrated

I only have a week and a half left. I have taught kindergarten, but what else? I had this great plan when I was first looking into this trip…well not GREAT bc I still knew that it was just a little bit that I could do as a recent college graduate with a (very broad) degree in public health, being here for only a little under 2 months. (At least for now, as I thought then and still now, although now I doubt what I can contribute without more schooling even more than before.) When I first started looking into the trip I was hoping I would be able to talk with the public health contacts that I have to get ideas and donations for medical supplies for a clinic and curriculum for health classes….but realistically, in my last quarter of college, with school, work and jumprope (not that it’s different than my whole school carreer!) I’m not quite sure how I convinced myself I was going to do that, even if I only believed it for a little bit. Still, I thought that coming here I would be the BEST  kindergarten teacher the kids have ever had, teach a jumprope class and maybe even get them to want to have a little team! And teach them about health. Well, I have done a little bit of all of those things, but coming up on the last full week of my time here, I can’t help but think that I have failed them a little. I don’t always feel like I have done enough with my teaching. I have only done one health presentation. And the jump rope class kind of fizzled. Part of the time the ropes were locked in a closet we didn’t have keys to…but still.
I found myself feeling very unconfident as I tried to prepare the health talks. I really have not wanted to be up in front of the whole school and I have had a hard time deciding what to talk about. I have ideas, and things I want them to learn about, but it has been difficult to get it together into something that is concise enough, simple enough, deep enough, interesting enough, for a group of kids from 6-15 years old…in another language. I get discouraged and then I tell myself to just bite the bullet and do it. Who cares if you are afraid? Who cares if you don’t do it exactly right? At least it is SOMETHING!!! I finally started thinking that, and feeling selfish for not wanting to do it bc it’s hard or scary. But, still it hasn’t happened how I wanted it to, for various reasons, but I can’t help but feel at fault. I guess I still have a week and a half to make up for it! Monday I am talking about mental health, the talk I was supposed to give last week…but didn’t :/ that is, unless I change my mind and decide to make a completely new presentation tomorrow! I’m really gonna try to just bit the bullet and get over myself. But it’s scary! But now I’m thinking…probably better to fail trying than to fail by not trying eh? Ok, here I go…to read a bit and then to bed! Tomorrow is my second to last time at church, and then it’s to work on the presentation again, and lesson plans for the week! So that I am comfortable enough to not worry so much about the microphone that they said I have to use this time! I might make Elise do this one with me!
Oh yeah, I am gonna miss these kids like crazy! My beautiful, funny, so so adorable kindergarteners (who are graduating in December, by the way! And look so cute in their little caps and gowns!) and all of the students at AFE as well as some of the boys from the Micah Project. I can’t get enough of them! Oh yeah, my little crush, Axel, told me he liked me today! It was great to get to know some of the older boys better too. They are characters! A great gang of guys. I got to spend a bit of time with them today since we went with a group of North Americans to Valle de Angeles. They are here for the graduation of three of the guys that was last night. It was pretty amazing to see these young men, who came from a life so far from what mine has been, from being helpless, homeless, without family, standing strong and confident in front of a crowd who loves and supports them. They all have so much promise and potential, and I don’t doubt one bit that God will continue to do great things with their lives.


sheesh, that one was more like a blog wasn't it? shoot.

Old news/I’m very behind!

Ok, a couple weeks ago there was a team visiting (there is almost always a team visiting! Which is great in many ways, but makes it very difficult to have any sort of regularity in the kids’ class schedule!) who happened to be a medical brigade…who happened to have a few dentists, along with their pharmacists and other helpers who were doing vision tests and checking the basics, weight, temp etc….aaaannndd….i got my teeth cleaned. :/ :D <--that’s me having mixed emotions about the experience!



Again, mixed emotions. For those of you who know me and my teeth well…this was kind of a big deal!! I was a little nervous, but after a lot of prodding and questioning the dentist more than once to make sure it was “just a cleaning”, I gave in. I felt guilty getting my teeth cleaned before the kids, but he didn’t have people waiting yet and he wanted to do it then since the kids weren’t ready yet. However, by the time he got the squirty thing working and finished, our little library was full of kids ready and waiting. I felt bad for one of the girls who upon her little inspection found out that she had to get a tooth pulled. She was scared and crying with her head on the table. She wouldn’t agree to let them pull it, and bc of my first dentist experience, I was worried about her not getting it pulled. I tried to tell her it would be better if they took it out now so that it didn’t get infected and that it would hurt later if she didn’t let them take it out now. Even knowing that I lived through my teeth pullings (so far two new words in this post  ) didn’t convince her. I don’t think she ever got that thing out of there. It was great that even some of the family members got to come and get some teeth pulled that were hurting them though.




It was mmm interesting to see a pharmacy giving out all sorts of pills to 6, 7, 8 yr old children without much instruction other than take this 3 times a day.