Habitat for Humanity

Last Saturday, I went with a group of high school students to do Habitat for Humanity. It is a wonderful organization that goes around and helps those in need, mostly by helping them to build a house. There were about 20 high school kids, one father, and five teachers that went. It was a really cool day. We did a lot of work (not too hard of work!!) but it was great for the students to get out and see what others live like in their own country. Our high school students, I learned, are required to do 30 hours of community service during each of their 9th, 10th, and 11th grade years. They do a lot of work in orphanages, Habitat for Humanity, and I learned that some of them even give up time in the summers and go out and do translations for doctors and they are right in the middle of the OR and stuff. Pretty intense. This was a great day. We went out to a town called Chimaltenango, about an hour or so outside of the capital. We were just working on this little street, mixing and laying concrete for the floor and taking some wire and wrapping it around these other metal poles or something that I'm not sure what it was for. ha ha. It was fun though.

Stephanie and Rachel were two other teachers that went. This is when we were cutting the wire to wrap around these poles and attach these other metal things. So technical, I know!

I'm not sure if this is the boy whose house we were building or not, but he wanted to hang around by us for a little bit. We asked to take his picture and he did. But then he was totally done with the camera! ha ha.

I did sneak one more picture in of him! :)

You see different types of things outside the city than in the capital. Here is this horse carrying wood. We saw this scene several times. This was the best picture I got.

The boys had to fill the buckets with the concrete mix and carry it up his ladder. I was scared to walk up it without a bucket of concrete!!!

Mixing concrete in the middle of the street!

Taking a little rest!

This is when we were attaching the little metal things to the poles with the thin wire.

Then we had to chisel out a hole in this cement block. I was scared to do it, as some people were breaking bricks!!!! This girl was so sweet and did a fantastic job!

Carrying a sack of flour home!

I was Stephanie's "encourager" as she chiseled away!

I went over to help mix concrete, but this guy kept taking my shovel. He was a lot better than I was anyway!!!!

But, yes, I did do some work!!!! :)

For our group picture, the guy told Rachel and I to lay in the wheelbarrows!!!!

Our work group for the day!!!

Advisory Competitions

Along with our assembly last week, we also had advisory competitions, which the kids love. It's fun to watch them run around and really work together as a team. The first game we played was ultimate frisbee, which my kids did great. They kicked the other team's tail! I took a few pictures. I don't have any pictures of our second game, softball, because I was playing with the kids. :) Reliving the glory days. ha ha. It was so fun. The kids always have a blast. We are the Teletubies! :)

7th Grade Slideshow

Here is the slideshow I made for the assembly. I thought it turned out pretty cute. It is about 10 minutes long, but I think it's worth watching to see how cute my kiddos are!!!! ENJOY!

7th Grade Assembly

OK, so now I am totally within striking distance. I am blogging about our assembly just LAST Friday. Yes, less than one week ago. :) I know I say this every time, but I really am going to do my best to stay on top of my blog after this! ha ha. I just had my master's class for two weeks and then we ran into finals, which meant getting all grades completed, writing the final exam, and then grading all 100 of the tests. So anyway, last week was the end of trimester 2. That means that I am 2/3 of my way through my first year here in Guate. Kind of weird to think about. So for the end of the second trimester, we had a little assembly to celebrate. Somehow I got put in charge of it with one of the other teachers who was going to be gone that day. :) We got it all organized and planned out. We decided that we would give away some awards to kids in each section for their hard work, have a slideshow of pictures, and let some of the kids showcase their talents. We have some really talented kids in our school and it's fun to see them in their element rather than only in math class. So I am happy to say that it went off pretty well. I did a powerpoint for the entire assembly so I took pictures of all the kids and put them up on the screen when it was their turn to perform. (I apologize for the quality of pictures, I had a student taking them!!!)

One of my favorites was this group of boys. Three of them played guitars while three of them sang the song. They were so cute!

Here they are warming up.

Our flexible gymnasts!!!

I turned around and saw this girl snapping all these pictures of me. I ended up with about ten of them similar to this but most of them I am not turned around! I also had about ten pictures of the floor and seats in the auditorium. (And yes, every Friday is jeans day at our school!!!)

This was one of my two favorite acts that went. Joseph was playing in the band with the other boys but then he asked if he could do his own song as well. He rocked the house man!!!! (There is a video of him at the end of this post!!)

This picture is really dark, but I had to mention this kid. He is one of my biggest class clowns and he asked if he could play the piano. I had a big talk with him and said, you better be taking this seriously, you better not get up there and act like a clown, etc. He assured me he was serious. WOW. He got up there and rocked the house to some Beethoven. It was awesome. I was so proud of him.

Boy band! :)

Giving out awards for participation. Not sure what happened to my head in this picture!

Joseph playing and singing. He's so cute and did an awesome job!

Day of Movement....

So a few weeks ago (I am actually blogging about February now, can you believe it???), the middle school had a day of movement. A bunch of teachers volunteered to lead different workshops, ranging from salsa dancing to yoga to giant twister to pilates to gymnastics to cheerleading to line dancing. Yes, I was recruited to help with the line dancing workshop. We had three 45 minute workshops throughout the day. My friend Kelly is from Georgia so she was in charge of it. I decided I would help her so I could spend the day listening to country music! Little did I know how much I would end up enjoying myself all day and getting into the line dance. :) It was so fun. The kids even started to get really into it. It was so cute. Here are a few photos and even a few videos that are probably worth watching if you have the time! They are cute.

Kelly teaching the kids the line dance.

Letting the kids take a shot at it!

Here I am trying to help teach!

Some of my crazy 7th graders were so focused and really getting into it. I was so surprised that they were so interested. It was really cute and they ended up doing a great job!

They even made up some of their own moves to the same dance. A strange mix between the line dance and the......chicken dance???

The girls were very focused and trying to get it right! So cute.

Check out these videos of the kids dancing.

After we had workshops all afternoon, we had a closing assembly for the kids which was awesome. They hired these ninjas to perform at the assembly. Oh my gosh, it was so awesome. I decided after that if I dated a ninja, I would feel soo sooo safe in Guatemala. I wouldn't have any doubts anymore. ha ha. They were just so cool. They also had this team of cheerleaders from some area high school that the boys were like all in love with. Seventh graders are pretty funny when it comes to that stuff. They were like, Miss Bass, I think she wants my phone number, can I go give it to her? I was like, NO, sit down!!! Anyway, it was a fun day that the kids really enjoyed.

Futbol

I knew that the Latin countries love futbol (or soccer, as we gringos know it). What I didn't realize is that we would dismiss classes to go watch our high school soccer game in a tournament. Only about half of the kids really seemed to care about it, so I spent the rest of the time taking pictures of the kids that weren't really paying attention. These kids are just so darn cute, I can't seem to get enough of them. Of course, there are the ones that are complete stinkers, but some of them are so charming that I have a hard time getting mad at them! ha ha. I try to be so strict but I end up being a big pushover most of the time! Our school hosted the big AASCA (Association of American Schools in Central America) tournament this year, so this was the game we were watching. Our school vs. a school in Nicaragua. It was pretty fun. Here are some of my kiddos!

Sharon's Birthday!

Birthdays are definitely one of the hardest times for me to be away from home. Not just my family, I can't remember the last time I celebrated a birthday with my family, but just being away in general. My second year in Korea was a lot better than the first, and I have a feeling my first year here in Guatemala will be hard. By the time the second May rolled around in Korea, I felt like I had my Korean family there. I don't feel like I have my Guatemalan family yet. It will come, I have no doubt, but I haven't found it yet. And this year is the big 3-0. But anyway, all that to say, we had a little celebration for our friend Sharon to help her celebrate her birthday. I had class that evening so I arrived late, but got there in time for a delicious dessert. We had chocolate fondue with a bunch of different fruits and things to dip into the chocolate. It was perfect.

Here is Stephanie slaving away on the stove over the melting chocolate! :)

All the yummy things to dip into the chocolate along with Sharon's birthday plate!

Serving it up! (And yes those are my papers I was grading at the party at the end of the table!! ha ha)

First time I've seen candles stuck in pineapple chunks! :) It worked.

The happy birthday girl!

Blow out all your candles!

What a fun night and a great group of gals!

Beach Day

After a rough weekend, my sweet friends took me to the beach for the day on a Sunday. I had a really bad weekend so far, so they decided to get me away from it all and relax. It was so nice and seriously, just what the doctor had ordered. So Jorge, Heber, Kelly and I headed to the shore. We stopped first at this place that has these pools and hung out for a little while. We had a picnic lunch there and Kelly and I read and laid out while the boys tried to stay out of the sun. Weird. ha ha. Here are Heber and Jorge laying in the shade trying to avoid the sun.

Then we drove on a little further to go to Puerto San Jose, which is a close beach town. We paid like $7 or so to park in this spot where you can use the bathrooms and these little tables right on the beach to hang out. We parked there and sat around and drank a beer while watching the sunset. There are some really pretty sunsets here. Kelly, Jorge, and I relaxing. This is quite the life!

Heber and I

Watching the sun go down, one of my favorite activities. Wait, can I really call that an activity?? Ha ha. One of my favorite things.

Beach at Puerto San Jose

More sun going down

Kelly taking it all in

We're almost there.

Kelly and Heber relaxing on the beach

Breaking through the clouds. It wasn't quite clear that night but it was still pretty!

That was about as far as we got before we took off.

Wow, so beautiful.

After hanging at the beach for a few hours and watching the sun and not even talking much, we headed back to the town of Esquintla where we visited Jorge's aunts and uncles. It is like this old hydroelectric plant where his family used to work. It is not functioning anymore, but the families who used to work there still own land and can live there. It was so cool. He told me we were going to stop and say hi to his grandma. Little did I know this meant a stop at the cemetery. I was a little freaked out to say the least. This place had no lights and I have not seen so many stars in a really really long time. I really enjoyed this day.