Countdown to the First Day of School

It's Monday night and there are two days left until students arrive for class at Asuncion Christian Academy. Brandon has a full schedule as the school's only P.E. teacher, teaching students from Pre-Kinder all the way through 12th grade. Quite the challenge, especially since some of the grade levels only have 5 students, making team sports difficult to do. Thankfully the school was flexible in allowing Brandon to combine some of the grade levels so that a volleyball or basketball unit wasn't out of the question. It will be fun to watch him with the little ones; I'll have to sneak out and get pictures of him playing with the 4 and 5 year olds!

I, too, have been brought on staff as the substitute 3rd grade teacher until a permanent teacher can be hired (and paperwork processed, plane ticket bought, etc.). They are letting me bring Bailey to school with me and the Director of Academics (the principal figure) is going to relieve me during the day when I have to nurse. And for language arts I'm thinking about doing centers and making one of them the "Read to Bailey" center for students to practice their fluency. I'm kidding, well, maybe not, we'll have to see how it goes.

Settling into the apartment is going well, I suppose. It's definitely different, moving into a place that is fully furnished. I'm grateful that we didn't have to purchase furniture for the place when we arrived, but the rooms don't feel like "home" when furnished with items you didn't choose. There are a few wall hangings that were left by the previous occupants that aren't bad, just not what I would have picked. There are also numerous random nails sticking out of the walls that are driving me NUTS, but we don't have a hammer with which to yank them out. Yet . . .

Our neighbors are wonderful. Our neighbors on the ground floor are South African natives who have been in Paraguay off and on for the past decade. They are the apartment "mom and dad" for the rest of us. Upstairs there is one single girl who has been here for three years, one single girl who just arrived, and another couple who is new to the staff. Funny story: we had a game night Sunday night and played Scattergories. There are lists of categories (fruits, insects, things you find in a car, weather words, etc.) and you roll a letter-dice. Whatever letter comes up, you have to write down items in that category that start with the letter. You don't get points for something that another person has written down, so you try to think of obscure answers. Anyway, one round the letter was "O" and one of the categories was U.S. Presidents. Any guesses what we ALL wrote down??? NOTHING!!! None of us thought of a president starting with an "O," none of us, that is except for the South African whose been in South America for years! When she announced her answer, we all exploded laughing, especially since we had our photo taken with Obama just a few days earlier at the Expo (a state fair type event).



One thing that is helping us settle into life in Asuncion, Paraguay, is getting off campus. It's only a few blocks to the grocery store and we're comfortable doing that without a chaperone (though I have to remember to use the spanish/english dictionary on my grocery list before going). Up the street, too, is a DVD rental store and a cafe called La Miga. The DVD store has old seasons of a few series that we're catching up on and La Miga has DELICIOUS pastries. We've also gone out several times on the bus, though I'm not at all confident enough to do that alone. Brandon says he wants to go out and "get lost" and then try and find his way home. Go for it, I say. I'll be at home with Bailey.

Sunday we made it to church with the rest of the apartment gang. Jenn, our upstairs neighbor who has been here for years, led us on the bus and through the streets. It was a traditional Baptist church, but they did have a praise "band" complete with drums, guitar, flutophones, violin, classic sax, piano, keyboard and harp! Most of the songs were older praise songs, but I was able to decode enough of the words on the projector that I got the gist of most songs. The sermon, though, was another story. Every now and then I caught words and phrases that I understood, but if I started thinking about what the pastor was saying (which is the point during a sermon), I lost track of the Spanish and it took a while to get back into it.

Bailey is doing really well. She's slept through the night twice and I'm hopeful that it will become consistent here soon! She's getting used to being in the Baby Bjorn and napping on the go. I just hope that she still will sleep in her crib!

Thank you all for your continued prayers and support. If there is some way we can be praying for you, or you'd like to be on our monthly newsletter list, e-mail us at trevinofam5@hotmail.com.