Merry Christmas

This has been a busy and hectic couple weeks. We finished our last day of school before Christmas break today and have had a lot of stuff going on in school, as well as everything I have going on back home. It's been two weeks since I have been to bed by 2 and I am definitely ready for a break, I just hope I have some time to relax at some point. I apologize for not having a blog up last week and being late this week. i have some pictures for you from this week's Christmas celebrations and then also a lot of other random pictures from feeding sites or elsewhere.

 This is a picture of some of the Filipino teachers helping me unload one of the 50 pound boxes of school supplies that Escalon Presbyterian Church sent to the school. They have sent two boxes and the school is so grateful for what we have been given. My room is covered with posters and things that were sent and our kids are constantly using paper, crayons, pencils, colored pencils, markers and other things that our church sent.

 Our first attempt at trying to make a thank you picture for the church.

 The paper signs were much more visible. Thank you so much to everyone who donated school supplies or money to send them to us. They are needed here so much and it gives the teachers so much more ability to do things outside of the textbook. It makes it so hard to teach when you don't have any materials. The materials help give the teachers so many ways to reach the kids in visual and hands on ways that the kids enjoy and learn more from.

 Rjon

Jules and Jecel

 The 15 finalists for the singing showcase. We had singing auditions for the whole school, whoever wanted to try. The judges chose the top 5 students from KI and KII, top 5 from grade 1-3, and top 5 from grade 4-6. This last Tuesday we had the 15 finalists perform in a singing showcase for the school and their parents to see.  I had one of my second graders and three of my 5th graders in it. It was a fun time to be able to watch and enjoy the singing talents some of our students have. One of the coolest things I've seen here is having Muslim parents coming into the school and supporting their children in the Bible Quiz Bee and the singing showcase where they were singing christian or Christmas songs. To see them so excited and proud of their kids for being talented or knowledgeable in a christian environment is amazing. I honestly can't even explain to you how awesome it is and how powerful it is to see it.

Karryl Angel, Jecel, Rjon, and Mikaella

 Karryl Angel and Mikaella

Today we had our Christmas concert/ celebration/ party. Each class put on a performance, mostly singing. This is the other grade 2 class acting out the Christmas story.

 My grade 2 class getting ready to sing their song.

 The kinders doing their dance, they were definitely hilarious.

 My grade 5 class with the grade 6 class getting ready to do their song.

 My grade 2 class playing musical chairs during our Christmas party. All the parents came to watch the performances from the classes and then we all head back to our classes for our parties with games and opening presents, and lots of food.

Outside of school I get to hang out with some pretty cool people. I am so lucky to have such awesome missionaries here and the longer we've been here together the closer we've all gotten to each other. I have a family here. I have a lot of missionaries my age and we've all become great friends, and we also have three missionary families that we've also gotten really close with. I get to work with the missionary kids in youth group and we also spend a lot of time with the adults. There have been some tough times here and these people have been there to get me through them. They were friendly when I needed a friend and motherly when I needed motherly advice or just a hug. I am so blessed to have all these people here and we make an awesome team and strengthen each other so much. I know we were definitely all placed here to be able to work together as a team and do amazing things together and keep each other going.

 Playing hit the cup off of Carla's head with a whiffle ball using hockey sticks. It's a pretty fun game, definitely not easy though. Most of the time we play card games, but every once in a while we get creative.

 The 20's missionaries, after breakfast, before church. I chose the wrong two people to stand in between haha.

Two of my favorite Filipinas. Another part of working here is being able to form friendships with the Filipino staff as well. We have a lot of differences from our cultures but we also have a lot of things in common. We are teaching at the school for the same reasons and they might not be called missionaries but they left their homes to come to Boracay to teach and minister so that makes them missionaries in my book. We play basketball with some of the guys on staff and hang out, play games, watch movies, get ice cream with a lot of the staff.

 Kids at my feeding site.

My best friend at the Cagban feeding site. As soon as we come walking into the village she runs up and grabs my arm and pulls me to the place we do the site. She sits next to me  throughout the feeding and tries to help me when I'm playing doctor sometimes, we even have our own secret handshake.

 The typical houses in the villages around the island. This is on our way to our Cagban feeding site.

 I wish I would have put something next to this snail so you could see how big this thing is. It is by far the biggest snail I've ever seen. The dark brown part of the shell is about the size of a baseball maybe even a little bigger.

The longer you stay here and the more you spend time in the island and not on the beach the more you forget how beautiful this place can be. It's nice when you get reminders like this of how beautiful it is here.

I'll be taking a couple weeks off from my blog during Christmas, but I'll get it started up again in January. Thank you for your support and love, it is so important to everything I do here.
Merry Christmas.