Friends, I am blessed. BLESSED.
Things are incredible here.
Why, you ask? Because of TEACHING. Because of MY TEAM. Teaching…it’s awesome. If you know me, you know I feel pretty comfortable in front of people, but get me in a classroom, in front of students, and I thrive! I communicate well to my students, and I enjoy [nearly] every minute of it! My children are growing in creativity and critical thinking and even enthusiasm, my teenagers are growing in confidence and character and fluency and grammatical accuracy, my adult students are growing conversationally and their technical language knowledge is developing, allowing them to advance in their careers! I love watching my students develop linguistically. Today, my children performed a play that they’ve been writing together for two weeks. It was far from perfect, but it was incredibly precious and reflected a lot of teamwork and cooperation—skills that we’ve had to learn together! I was an unbelievably proud teacher of these little ones today. I have a job that I love, a job that I look forward to, a job that I enjoy preparing for, a job that stretches SO far beyond the walls of my classroom. But the icing on the preverbial teaching cake? By being a teacher, I’ll never stop learning. (see pictures of my precious students below.)
[look who got an A on her spelling test!]
[i love it when my students are hard at work!]
And my team…
Conventional, normal, Run of the Mill, usual—is not my team. We’re just three, and we live far, far away from any other teams in our company. Two guys and one girl. G, S, and me. The guys live in the flat directly below me, and since we’ve been here, I’ve realized how incredibly blessed I am to serve and be served by and serve along side of them. We are the same in this: we desire more than anything to see our King glorified in this place and in each other. They’re genuine, they’re hysterical, they’re just fun to be with. They’re protective, they’re team-minded, they’re following hard after the cross. This team is the real deal, friends—they will KNOW we are disciples of the Most High by our love. Those boys are a gift to me, a gift to this city, a gift to our school. I want to more effectively serve them, to keep them constantly lifted high before the throne, serve along side of them and confidently ask our Father to work through us. They rock, and I’m pretty darn thankful that they’re in my life. (see a few team pictures below…)
[in Georgia, discussing who-knows-what.]
[basically, i laugh all the time because of these two.]
Other news: tonight, G cooked a delicious meal, and I made my first cake (and frosting) completely from scratch! Total success. But seriously, it was the first one—while cooking, my google searches included “how to make buttermilk” and “how to cream butter” and “does imitation vanilla equal real vanilla” and oh-so-many-more. Booyah! Take that, domestification!
LANGUAGE LAUGHS:
So, usually I post funny little language slip-ups from my students. This story, however, finds the tables turned. The other day, we were playing Ticket to Ride over here with some friends—one whose nickname is “Emish.” Sometimes, I like to make nicknames out of nicknames. So, one time her turn came around and she wasn’t quite paying attention, and I said,“Memish! Your turn!”
Surprised, she turned to me and she said,
“Juli, in my language, you have just called me ‘boobs’. You should not call me ‘Memish.’”
LOTS of laughing ensued.
CULTURE LAUGHS:
This country is a country of many, many superstitions. Today, I was typing my kids’ play on my laptop, and one of my coworkers comes up and tells me that if I look at my computer screen for
too much longer, I will probably lose my eyelashes and eyebrows. He then went on to blame American male baldness on computer use. Anyway, I laughed a little on the inside while I donned a furrowed brow and promptly closed my laptop on the outside. Never a dull moment, friends. Never.
BE BLESSED this weekend, friends!
Also, shameless plug for the little baby in purple, my beautiful neice, Abby: I miss you so much it makes my heart hurt. I love you, precious girl!
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