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!