I got ready for school this morning eating oatmeal and watching "Love Actually" and the sun come up simultaneously. An hour and a half later I braved the three minute walk to school and entered into my normal, crazy life of children yelling my name from the windows and as they zoom past me down the hall. With my register in hand and Zeynab by my side, it was off to the 6th grade. After teaching a few other classes I went home to start cutting and washing beans. I want to freeze them so that when all the beans run out in the winter, I'll still have some to eat :) We will see how that turns out! That's when I got a call from Zeynab to meet her down in front of the school and go home with her today. I hurriedly put on my jeans and shoes and was out the door. But before we could go to her house we needed to go see her sister and brother-in-law's new store! We spent the next 45 minutes eating all the sweets we could from off the selves while chatting (I mostly listened). Soon enough it was on the bus and down to Zeynab's house where we had delicious pizza and hot tea awaiting us. Then it was out to the garden, to the Persimmon tree. Zeynab hit the tall, tall branches with the longest stick we could find, as I gathered them from the ground, sticking them in my pockets, up my selves, any place there was room to hold them. With Persimmons in hand the two of us decided to take a walk along to river behind her house and had a nice long talk. Our friendship only gets stronger every time we see each other, which sometimes is everyday! After a while we turned around, I had promised to teach her daughter to carve a pumpkin and it seemed like that right time to do that. So we collected a green pumpkin from the garden and Salmi and I cut it and carved it and turned it into a two faced creature! After lots of pictures and laughter it was back to work. Zeynab needed to clean the potted plants and bring them inside for winter. So I carried them to the outdoor sink while she wetted a wooden broom and splattered them with water until they were good and clean. One of these plants was tall and wilty looking but smelled of citrus. She crushed some in my hand for me to smell. These pieces I then, of course, accidentally sniffed up my nose and spent the next few hours sneezing and uncomfortable as leaves moved from my nasal passage to my throat and mouth. We all had one more round of tea and talk before I got on the bus home, with my plant starts and bucket for my own indoor garden in hand. And right on schedule, on the bus, I swallowed the leaves from my nose. Now I'm home, watching the sun set from my kitchen window as I finish preparing the beans to be frozen and realizing that I haven't had gas all day, so I guess the beans will go into the boiling water another time. Maybe I'll just watch the ducks out the window as they move from puddle to puddle, or, maybe I'll just get in bed and watch a movie :) Anyway, I just thought I would share my typical day with you all at home. Sometimes its rough going, but days like this leave me with a smile on my face.
These are the kids' pumpkins all lit up at night! They are so great! (Today I'm going over to my teacher's house to carve some with her and her kids cause this just turned out so good, I wanted to keep sharing!)
Mason and I with all of the 6th graders in costume ready for the audience to come! Mason came up to help me get the kids pumped up about acting scary during the play.
All off their moms and siblings (and lots of other teachers) came to watch the performance. It turned out so SPOOKTACULARLY!
This whole month has just been fantastic for me. My class has shown so much creativity and eagerness to learn. I was completely impressed by their costumes and how scary they could act! Thanks to Bonnie and family for the Halloween package, I shared the candy with the kids during the week to reward their hard work and gave away the decorations you sent as prizes during the play! The kids thought the decorations were SO cool :) Now all the kids want to do a New Years play! So be excited to hear about that one. I know I'm excited to keep teaching them in this way, using creativity to help them think outside the box-I really think I can feel accomplished about the way this class has started learning and that feels GREAT!
We are going to use them as decorations for the Halloween play we have coming up this week.
They have never done anything like this before, they wanted to know if we were going to eat all the goo we took from the inside (I know, you're thinking about the seeds but we didn't go there. Plus you clean all the goo off)! But they caught on so fast and were so creative with their silly faces!
Getting ready for this Halloween play has just been awesome! On friday my class came after school and spent 2 hours watching "Hokus Pokus" and drawing decorations. One girl even gave me five drawings of witches and bats and things that she did at home over the weekend! I have been completely inspired and energized by their enthusiasm and creativity in all of this and I can't wait to do lots more hands-on projects with this class!
So this is what I'm doing today, came home from school, bought some Nar on the way and now I'm cleaning, doing laundry (yep, those are my clothes) and eating Nar. And lets be honest this is what I'll be doing everyday when I'm finished with school and clubs and what-not- I'll be eating Nar :)
Its still 85 degrees here, but now its not always sunny (like today). Next I'll get some pictures of the Nar trees cause they literally grow like weeds on the side of the highway here; they are EVERYWHERE! And the trees might be one of my favorite parts about the fruit, they are quite whimsical!