kids say the darndest things...

Well, as I mentioned, I asked my second form boys to write essays explaining why they make noise in class. Their explanations were pretty funny (and insightful, I think it's helping with class control a bit) and I wanted to post two of my favorite essays... Just to give you some insight into what these guys are like.

The assigned topic was: "When I make noise in class it is harder for others to learn and Miss Alison punishes us all. However, I make noise in class anyways. This is why:"

Essay #1 is actually a poem:

I always ask myself, also pray to the heavenly sky
to make us good guys.
Please teacher try to understnad us
what we want is you to get us into higher standards [standards = grades]
We love our teachers
Sometimes in class we act like Jungle Creatures
Please forgive us try to understand us
Please we are boys we have more engergy than the girls.

Essay #2 is pretty Theological:

I do not always make noises but there are times when I do especially if the class is not interesting. I believe that since it is Religion that you are teaching the devil does not want us to hear about the good things and so I am tempted to make noise.
I am aware that I should not do it because it's true that the noise I make prevent others from learning and this should not happen. Perhaps I would sit very quietly I would not be tempted.
I also truly believe Miss Alison that if you would pray wholeheartedely for me and my classmates we would pay attention in class and understand each other better.

I don't know if the humour in these will translate on-line, but I hope it can just give you a glimpse of what these guys are like... They drive me crazy but they're truly sorry when they're bad!

you know things have changed when....

Some of you may appreciate this more than others. I just got back from the faculty restroom here at Mt. Carmel (don't worry, this is a G-rated story). When I walked into the stall, there was a gecko running up the wall behind the toilet and wouldn't you know, it didn't phase me one bit. I just continued with my... intended activities. Granted, I didn't try to catch it to hug it or anything, but this is the girl that, this summer, wouldn't walk into her house if there was a lizard on the porch! (John Robert, don't get any ideas about what's acceptable indoor pets while I'm home, ok?). Anyways, I just wanted to share...

So, the real news is the fact that I had a hot shower on Friday night! Whooo hooo! This weekend I had to run an errand to Belize City to redeem a voucher for my ticket back in January and another teacher, Marybeth, had to take the GRE's. So, we did something highly un-recommended by the guidebooks and traveled to Belize city on Friday evening and stayed overnight. Granted it's dangerous, but so is life so we just gathered our street smarts and had a wonderful very safe weekend, the highlight not being the fact that I got a deal on my one-way return ticket but that we splurged for a "safe" hotel room (meaning not budget) which had hot water... Not just the Central American solution to cold water which is a coil which heats up the water as it comes out of the spigot (and gives you a bit of a shock if you happen to forget and touch the spigot, as I did once... I figure it's some sort of homeopathic treatment that hasn't been discovered yet...) Oh no, this was a genuine-turn-the-knob-that-says-"h"-and-have-water-get-warmer-as-you-turn-the-knob-more-and-then-have-it-stay-hot-through-your-whole-shower-water. The bathroom was tiled, and the BEST part was, when you stepped outside of the bathroom, instead of sweat instantly gathering on you (it's the wierdest feeling, stepping out of a cold shower and instantly being hotter than you first were...) the hotel room was air conditioned, so we didn't perspire the whole night! Marybeth and I agreed that regardless of how things went on Saturday in respect to her GRE's and my plane ticket, the hotel room was WELL worth the two hour trip from Benque. For the records, we both showered in the morning too.

Ok, did I really just spend a paragraph on showers? It was honestly the highlight of my weekend... Getting to eat at Subway on Saturday was a close second... Belize is probably the only country I've heard of that doesn't have a McDonalds (even Guatemala City is rumoured to have not only that but a Starbucks), the sole "chain" store in Belize is a Subway in Belize City (and it's only one store, so does that downgrade it to a "link" instead of a "chain"? I don't know...) That was also exciting, had there been chocolate chip cookies for sale that day, it may have topped the shower on the list, but they were out. Besides that, we had a fine safe time in Belize City and were home in Benque in time for the Red Sox game (speaking of which, what's the deal? The Sox finally make it to the Series and I'm in Belize? My housemate, Anne, is from Boston so she's leading the cheering section for Boston and has converted all of the teachers (ith the exception of one girl who's from Missouri) including the ones from England who couldn't care less about Baseball, the owner of the "sports bar" in Benque, and Father Mark and Father Dan! We've been watching the play-offs and now the series here, it's been so exciting! (and the first time I've looked at a T.V. in two months, which is just wierd... Have you ever noticed how excessive commericials are?).

I'm glad y'all liked the stories about my students, I'll post some more soon. They make me laugh so much, but I always forget things. Tonight some of my more chatty boys are writing an essay entitled, "When I talk in class it keeps others from learning and makes Miss Alison punish me but I do it anyways because..." to try to gain insight into why they inisist on making so much noise... I've discovered that having my students write essays for punishment is highly effective because 1) they hate it and 2) they're SO entertaining! A couple of days ago I had them write another one related to how they should behave in class since they were created in the image of God and not animals (they like to make turkey noieses in class) and the answers were a RIOT...

Thanks again for all your continued prayers and messages. I really appreciate hearing from you all, me and my kids pray for all of you!

my students make me laugh...

Thanks for all the messages from the 8th graders at St. Francis! You're right-- the kids in Belize are very similiar to you all in a lot of ways, let me try and answer some of your questions:

They LOVE music, and they seem to know a lot of the music that we have in the States. They listen to a lot of Spanish music but we've also heard Linkin Park (I know I'm not spelling that right... feel free to laugh at me, I'm an adult now and I'm not supposed to be "in" with music that's cool, remember?). All the Belizians love Celine Dion and other really "Delilah" type music. The kids are pretty into all the movies, because so many are sold on the "black market" (that sounds so illicit, but remember the Caribean is all about Piracy, from the cable to the internet) here they tend to see things at home before they're even out of the theaters. For example, I don't know if "I Robot" is out on Home Video yet, but they just showed it as a fundraiser at school. They also love to dance, these kids have a sense of rhythm that's quite incredible. I don't think any of them are into ballet or tap, they are more into salsa and merengue (I don't think I spelled that right either). It's really fun to watch, the Belizean teachers are always trying to teach us how to dance and let me tell you us white folks are just not as good at it!

So, my students make me laugh and I have so share some more stories. My boy-crazy second form girls have it in their head that because of certain parts of the Old Testament, the Bible says it's ok to have five boyfriends (oh, don't worry, we are beginning the ten commandments with a LONG unit on chastity!). So, they wrote on the board, "the commandment says: have 5 boyfriends". When I walked into the classroom I didn't react, I just walked right up to the board like I was going to erase it. Instead, I picked up a piece of chalk and put a "1" in front of the 5 so that it read "15". That brought down the house with a round of "eeeeeeehs!".

My second form boys are all aspiring sound-effects artists. The noises that come out of their mouths are rarely human sounding. The other day their was a noise in the classroom and I couldn't put my finger on who was making it. I asked them and they said "it's a gecko, miss". I looked at them with a "please, I am not just another gringa and I know you all well enough to know that it's one of you..." and then I hear all these voices saying, "yes miss, a gecko... One fifteen minute call could save you money on insurance..." I totally lost it at that, I had no idea they were familiar with Geico comercials!

So, William Mendez, one of my biggest troublemakers and favorite students (it's funny, those charactersistics go hand in hand with the many of us here, we love the personalities in class!) brought a Goliath beetle in for his science class (he smuggled it over the border from Guatemala...). Now, I've been to a lot of science museums as a former homeschooler. However, I have NEVER seen a bug this big. It's body had the size and density of a baseball. It was incredible. It thudded around in the trash can it was in and looked like something out of an X-Files episode. I walked into the teachers room on Friday morning and let out a gasp (ok, a scream) when I saw it in the hands of one of the other teachers. Well, William was standing right there and I think my reaction definately made his day (so much for keeping my fear of bugs hidden from my students!). Later on in class, I was talking about dispositions and habits and he said to me, "miss, you have a disposition to be afraid of animals". I said, calmly, trying to save face, "what makes you think I'm afraid of animals?". "Because miss, you were afraid of the bug". I responded, "Oh, that. Well, actually, the only animals I'm afraid of are the thirty four in front of me right now". Well, that got a big "eeeeeeh" from the boys, and they told me I had to write lines for them that said, "I will not be chancey in class". That was the first time I got an "eeeh" from the boys, they really don't like sarcasm!

Have I mentioned the hair gel obsession? These kids SLICK their hair (or "hairs" as they call it) back, especially the boys. The kids actually think us Americans are kind of messy for not using hair gel and the boys finally told me why. Continuing our conversation about habits in class, I told the boys, "you all have a good habit of washing your hair and combing it every day" to which they said, "yes miss, you should to." "What do you mean?" I asked. "Miss, you should comb your hairs. You look like Bob Marley". As I mentioned, they're brutally honest about your appearance on any given day! I laughed at them and told them that I wasn't writing lines for them after they criticized my hair! So, when I went into my girls class, they actually had their gel out and were giving their hairs the mid-morning touch up. I asked them, "does it look like I don't comb my hair?". The brown-nosers all replied, "oh no miss, your hairs are beautiful!... But do you want some, miss?" (holding out the gel) I laughed at them, explaining that it wouldn't quite have the same effect in my very white frizzy hair as theirs! They said, "ok miss. Can we dye your hair red someday?" This isn't the first time they've asked to do my hair, they want to corn row it too... Oh, they're so funny!

One more story for all of my fellow Red. majors out there who know me and my "O.C.C." tendencies (that's obsessive compulsive Catechist). My Catechism (which is on it's last leg, the spine is breaking! I feel like a part of me is dying!) was on the bed and Anne, one of my housemates, commented on the reference tabs in them. Ali was there too and we began to talk about the Catechism test and all of the anxiety it caused us, and about my experiences of taking it orally and how nerve-wracking it is to have Prof. Morgan quizzing you about why you got something wrong and how important it is for you to teach it correctly... and Anne looked at me and said, "wow, no wonder you're so high-strung!". Ali got a big kick out of that... All I could think of was my paper bags!

Ok, this was a random posting, but I just had to share those stories. Thanks for all the continued prayers. I'm on my way to a retreat team prayer time right now, please keep the retreats that we're planning in your prayers. (Coincidentally, they're on prayer, so if anyone has any good skit/ activities on prayer let me know!).

Benque's Centennial...

Let me just issue one more welcome to the computer class at St. Francis, I received word today that this blog is the lesson tomorrow! Let me reiterate that if you have any questions or comments about ANYTHING you read here, please feel free to e-mail or post them below!

I wanted to post a comical "life in Benque" story which doesn't really have a point but is just a snapshot of Belizean culture. So, this past weekend was Pan-America Day (Columbus day for us U.S. citizens) and, as Belizeans are likely to do for a holiday of any sorts, they canceled school. Not only did we not have school on Monday, but Friday was cut short for "clean up Benque day", after mass on Friday we went out with our students to pick up trash. Now, consider this. Trash clean up is always an unpleaseant thought for me, but as an American raised in the states, I have a sense of civic duty towards it-- in American we consider littering to be sinful because we've been raised celebrating "Earth Day" and planting trees and recycling, etc. etc., etc... Basically, we know that littering is wrong and we'll walk a while with litter in our pockets to avoid littering in the streets. Not with these kids! Apparently, until recently, the way that trash was disposed of in Benque was simply leaving it in piles on the streets, we've now progressed to either burning it in our backyard or for having someone take it to the "landfill" where it's burned in a pile. Litter is something that is not tolerated on our school campus, but we're alone in our mission (when Mt. Carmel had a volleyball game "away" the other week, I went after one of the balls that had went into such a pile on the campus of Mopan Technical College, whom they were playing. It was scary, there was trash of all varieties in that pile!).

So, Friday, we are told that our students (who, despite the appearance of their town, are so paranoid about dirt that they will sit with their backpacks on their backs all through class rather than allow them to touch the floor and consequentally get dirty) are to spend three hours picking up trash after mass! I wasn't really sure what this would entail... All of the students got one rubber glove and a trash bag and we went to town, walking up behind the school. Well, my girls were very ambitous and they wanted to walk all the way to one of their houses. The hardest part was getting them to actually stop and pick up trash, they wanted to just keep walking. Forty-five minutes later neither I nor the teacher I'm working with have any idea where we are, but my students assure me that we're only about three minutes from Guatemala, and "Miss, can we go there for lunch?". Go to Guatemala for lunch? No! "Why not Miss?" Because, I don't have my passport with me (why am I explaining this to you... who asks if they can go to another country for lunch?) "Oh, miss, they'll let you through, we'll talk to the guards and they'll be ok". Well, needless to say, we did not cross the border for tortillas in Guatemala. Still, it amuses me to no end that we came that close!

So, all in all, we only spent about 45 minutes actually cleaning up Benque... I should have known that doing work like that on "Belizian time" should be divided to about a quarter of what is mentioned! so, that was our experience with picking up trash in Benque!

rain drops are falling on my head!

Well, I think I need to take this opportunity of being back on-line (hopefully for good, but we’ve heard that line before, eh?) to give a shout-out to the eighth graders in Mrs. Riedel’s computer class at St. Francis Catholic School. I hear you’ve been reading my blog. Let me just say that first, I hope you are entertained! If you have any questions about what you read, feel free to e-mail me or post comments, I’d love to hear from you all!

Also, Happy feast of St. Francis of Assisi to all of my fellow Franuniv. alumni and students. You know, I’ve never missed Franuniv. more than when it was October 4 and everyone was talking about, St. Francis and animal blessings in the same sentence. I taught a lesson on St. Francis and considered it a success when they asked me why he was pictured with birds in the holy cards I gave them (somewhere in between his love for the cradle, the cross and the Holy Eucharist I forgot to mention that he also fed the birds in his spare time).

Oh, my students, my students. Never have seventy-five people brought me so much joy and frustration in the span of 65 minutes! There are so many stories and they all flee from my mind when I sit down to write my posts! Some things which stand out in my mind from the past few days are:

-When teaching the responsorial Psalm to prepare for mass, I discovered that none of my students knew what a “fortress” was. I asked them to try to figure out what it was, in context, and one of the boys asked, “four plus three in spanish, Miss?”

-My girls are SO boy crazy, I made the mistake of asking them to pray for my cousin who’s in the marines and in Iraq (they were very impressed), and they started asking me, “ooh, is he cute miss?” I said, “he’s too old for you!”. They said, “what about your brother, miss?” to which I replied, “he’s only 11!”. They all looked at me, dead serious, and said, “we are ten miss” (they’re all between 14 and 17!).

-I have a couple of boys in my class who are always getting in trouble but have actually started to become my allies in the class—I let them sit up front, right next to my desk (which drives me crazy!) but in return they quiet the class for me and prompt me for names when I can’t remember them… Anyways, when we had assembly the other day and I was with my homeroom, trying to get them to line up, two of my boys stood in the very front and said, “we are in your homeroom today, miss”. All my girls and I said, “ooh, you’re a girl for the day?” and they said, “yes miss, just lend us your skirt”. So obnoxious yet SO FUNNY.

-I don’t know if I mentioned this, but instead of saying “oooh” when people get in trouble like kids in the states do, the kids all say, “eeeh”. It always makes me laugh, especially because I’ll do it right back to them. I had a small victory in bi-lingual classroom control the other day when one of my girls came into the classroom after we had been outside and asked very loudly, in Spanish, who placed a bag on their desk. I responded, in English, “I did”. She looked at me shocked and said, “you understand Spanish miss?” and I said, “So much more than you think”. Well, that one brought a whole round of “eeeehs”. It’s so hard not to laugh.

There are so many other stories… My girls are big fashion consultants, they always let me know how I look (all of us girls have to get used to their rather blunt honesty!) and for the feast of St. Francis I wore mascara and eyeshadow for the first time in a while. At Monday morning assembly, all of the girls gathered around me and said, “oooh, miss, your eyes they are be-you-tiful!” I laughed at their reaction, they’re SO observant. In the middle of assembly, one of my cutest students looks at me and says, “I just like to look at your eyes today miss!” They don’t miss a thing!

It’s a good thing they’re so cute, because meanwhile outside the classroom the rainy season in the beautiful country of Belize has begun and let me tell you, it’s no picnic. The humidity is crazy, you hold up a sheet up paper and it becomes limp in your hand when it contacts the air. You no longer sweat because it’s cooler out, but you have a feeling that you’re constantly… not dry. Plus, this initiates a bug migration indoors and Cathleen and I have ants in our room. We woke up the other day and had to shake our clothes out because they were infested. The weird thing is that you just start to take it all in stride. If you know me well, you know how much this is God! The shaking out the ants from my clothes was just another thing you do in the morning, like drinking coffee. It’s gross but what are you gonna do, call the Orkin man?

Thanks for all the comments and e-mails, it’s so great to hear from everyone!