Day Thirteen: New Gifts and Twenty Minutes

Flowers from our yard that Hannah picked last night. Aren't they beautiful??

This morning was definitely better than yesterday morning! 

We were headed off to school very shortly after 7 a.m. so this mom was so much more at ease than yesterday! And with our new gifts ready to present to the kids, I was pretty excited, too.

Sophia - First Grade

Riccardo - First Grade

The little guys today were getting tired about an hour into the day, which is typical for the first week of school. I know I’d be feeling tired with all the things I’ve been giving them! However, they were totally stoked about their new things for school! I was a little surprised that the thing they seemed most excited about was the notebook paper! The boxes of 24 crayons were a pretty close runner-up, though, and they quickly asked what they needed to do to use them. They worked on making an “I Like” book, and the crayons were put to good use! It was adorable to watch them carefully remove one crayon from the box at a time and then replace it just as gently so it wouldn’t get broken. We have a special place to store our supplies, and each child watched to make sure I took care in putting them in the proper place.

Our Most Senior Student!

It was the three oldest students who were especially appreciative of the notebook paper, because they got to take notes on loose-leaf paper rather than just in their composition notebooks. They needed a sheet of paper to fold into thirds in our Sociology class so it was just the ticket! They meticulously wrote the information down in the proper column and then placed it inside their composition notebook for safe keeping when we were done. Each one thanked me at the end of our class.

Buddies, Danny and Pedro

My Thursday schedule ends at lunch time, so I stuck around for lunch, did some work to be ready for our first Friday, and after thinking about it, I decided this would be a perfect time for some alone “me” time. Next Thursday I’ll be starting someone on piano lessons, so this may be my only available time! I did get gas, which is worthy of a fuller description than I care to give tonight, but I’ll save the gas station details for another night! There is a cute little restaurant along the water’s edge in town where boaters can bring in their dinghy and then have a meal and/or beverage. This is also the place where the band plays on weekends and is probably the most recommended place on the island. So I headed to Mamacita’s, sat at a table near the water and just relaxed for about twenty minutes. It was splendid!

One of the Grocery Stores on the Island -
Probably Hannah's Favorite!

I went back to pick up Hannah and actually ended up working with Abbie and Lisa for a short bit. Then Hannah and I headed back to town to check the mail and pick up a few groceries before we came home. When we pulled up to park I noticed the bakery was open (most stores are open sometimes and closed others, if you get my drift) so we stopped in and picked up a great big loaf of freshly baked bread. It smelled so delicious we ended up eating half the loaf as our supper!!! (We did add a bit of cheese and some grapes, too.)

After supper I received a call from a friend on my new phone. Then I realized that although I thought I had lost all my contacts, she showed up! Of course I had to figure out why this happened and soon realized that now my phone is synced to my contacts via wireless internet connection so there are only a few that I’m missing. How cool is THAT??

I’m so pleased to be able to share with you pictures of some of our students today! They are each so precious and some have quite a difficult life situation yet are determined to make the most of their educational opportunity.

Zelin - First Grade

Thank you, God, for new crayons and paper and all of the wonderful goodies people sent to us! Thank you for giving me the opportunity to see first-hand the joy on those kids’ faces today. And thank you, too, for that twenty minutes to myself!!