It Might Be...

...another post about animals. Please excuse me for all the writing dedicated to my adventures with animals, but they have managed to find a way into my daily life that I didn't exactly foresee before I came to Nicaragua.

Today the PE teacher came into show my students a little friend of his:

Size? Larger than my human hand. Location found? The kitchen. 

About a month ago, this guy came to visit at school:

And this one at my house:

I am rethinking my earlier post about the pigeons. The ants have now surpassed them in unfortunate habits. To name a few:

• Finding a way through zipped backpacks and lunchboxes into my students' food. We are all ready for lunch, happy and hungry when... the ants attack. Raid must be found. Backpacks dumped out. Ant hills sought and destroyed. This happens at least once or twice a week. One student even wrote a very impressive poem about the reoccurring ant invasions. More on poems later.
• Living in my desk and a taking up residency between the keys of my keyboard.
• Tingling up your arms and legs as they crawl on you. They are small, so hard to locate. You feel them, but cant always see them. 

Raid is one of my new best friends. Not one of my favorite smells, but it gets the job done. 

___________

Time to talk poetry! I love love love teaching poetry. The last two weeks we have been doing a Monster Poetry Unit. When I first told my students we would be studying poetry they gave me the are you trying to kill me, Miss Eberly? face. I don't like that face. Two weeks later, some most of my students are generally excited about reading poetry, learning a new type of poem, and getting their ideas on paper. Some students have surpassed my expectation on what they can do. They all have a writer's notebook and I see them jotting down their new poems during the day and showing them off to me later. Today in groups they worked on some free verse poems about different colors. 

The Blue Group coping their group poem into their notebooks

Next week we are having a Monster Poetry Bash! I can hardly wait. Students will pick their best poems and copy and decorate them to present to the class. They are all memorizing a children's poem as well that they will present with (hopefully) excellent articulation, pausing at the correct spots in the poem. Be prepared for a bombardment of poetry pictures in the near future. 

xoxoxo

Laura

Rain Rain Go Away

Something weird happened this week:

My students came to school wearing jackets. We didn't turn on the classroom fans or open the windows. I wore long sleeves and wasn't hot or uncomfortable. The temperatures were in the -gasp!- upper seventies/lower eighties. 

Storms and hurricanes blowing over Mexico and other parts of Central America have brought almost a week of constant raining to Nicaragua. With it came a cool breeze and only tiny hints of the sun here and there. Yesterday for lunch my roommates and I had grilled cheese, tomato soup, and apple cider - we almost felt like it was fall. 

The rain does bring some issues. For example, my shoes are always wet and my clothes have been hanging on the clothesline for almost a week and still aren't dry (I am sure they have the very pleasant musty smell right now). The rains bring actual problems besides minor personal inconveniences. Some parts of the country have seen flooding, landslides, and a collapsed bridge. Guatemala and Mexico have experienced a lot of damage as well.  I am thankful to live in a sturdy apartment on a paved road when many around me do not. Please pray for protection for those living in places where the rains cause much damage.

My classroom has also experienced a little flooding action. 

Because the field at school is muddy, my students have been deprived of playing soccer for ONE WHOLE WEEK. Who knew they could last so long?

xoxoxoxo
Laura

Report Cards

Report card time is upon us. Video games, groundings, and extra privileges hang in the balance, filling students with either excitement or extreme apprehension.

On the report cards there is also a conduct section. If only there was room to give some examples of specific classroom behavior I see in my class:

• Earlier this week I was writing a math problem on the board. When I turned back around to ask my students a question, I noticed that one of my students was lying on their chair on their stomach, with both their head and feet touching the floor on either side. When I asked him what exactly he was doing, he gave me a look like I talked to him in Japanese and told me he didn't actually know. That made two of us. 
• During the middle of some student presentations, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned to see one of my students hiding behind a pole, peeking around it like they were a super spy with a pretend gun in their hands. He ducked in and out, squatted down, and even covered his head. He forgot about my existence and didn't notice me until I was a couple of inches away from him.
• We have chapel every Wednesday with the 3rd - 6th graders. I sit strategically behind a couple of my extra-energy kids to keep and eye on them. During the middle of chapel, one of my students mentally left school and must have landed at a dance party, because the next thing I knew, he was doing the Macarena, complete with all the movements, right there in chapel.

Yep, those are my kids. It is hard to account for those moments on their report cards, so maybe I will just let them be fourth grade secrets.

If you have time this week, please pray for my first ever parent-teacher conferences. Thank you!

xoxoxoxo
Laura

Hardhats and Bats

October is here. In other words, perfect time to explore a bat cave! 

Before we met the bats, we checked out Masaya Volcano. It is active, has many craters, and is a little smelly - yay sulfur!

A look into one of the craters

Another crater, home to monkeys, snakes, deer, anteaters, bobcats, and some old bones.

The sun went down, we picked out our gear (hard hats and almost-dead flashlights), and got ready to hit the trail to the bat cave.

"Yay can't wait to go on this trail!"

"What was that? There are vipers that hang from the trees and the bats might fly in our faces?"

I don't think it was wise for our guide to tell us the bit about the snakes, but he did. We did some hiking and found the bats (and thankfully no snakes).

Just like the ones at the zoo, minus the cages.

Before we went into the cave, the guide took out his flashlight and started examining the trees for snakes. WHY?!

The above cave is not the one we explored, due to large quantities of bats and fumes, and small quantities of oxygen. We chose this one:

Lovely, isn't it? The bottom of the cave is covered with large tree roots. People used to hide in here during war times, and looonnng ago it was used for sacrifices.

The coolest part of the night was standing on the edge of the volcano and listening. You could here the magma and gases moving below. On some nights you can see some of the lava. Unfortunately, this was not one of those nights.

I find it impossible not to see God's craftsmanship in this country. As we were hiking, I looked out and saw the sunset. I looked down and saw the mouth of a volcano. I looked up and saw the crescent moon. How can I not notice Him? 
....

That was my Saturday night. My weeks have been just as entertaining, only instead of bats and caves I have little 4th graders and earthquake drills. Earthquake drills are slightly more enjoyable than fire drills, tornado drills, and lock down drills that I practiced in the States. No more squeezing in small bathrooms or filing hundreds of students down flights of stairs. Here is the average earthquake drill:
Hear the alarm.
Get under your desk and cover your head.
Count out loud to 30.
Line up and walk quickly to the soccer field.
Hold up your green all clear sign if you have all your students and no injuries, hold up red if there is a problem.

This week we also did some crafts that our St. Paul pen pals sent us:

xoxoxo
Laura