Graduation!

It's hard to believe but the school year is over already. It seems like I just started and it definitely doesn't seem like a whole school year has gone by. I am definitely ready for a break and excited for the things I'm doing this summer but I will definitely miss my kids. We had graduation last week and it was a great time to celebrate our students.
Graduation is a huge huge deal here and along with graduation for the kindergarteners and grade 6, we also have awards for all of our students from each grade level. Each class comes up with awards that each one of the students has earned (gift of science, gift of friendliness, etc.). We recognize all of our students for their special gifts and have a ceremony before the graduation ceremony just for them. It is an awesome ceremony for the kids just to feel special and bring all the school together. After the recognition ceremony we had our grad ceremony for the kindergarteners and grade 6. It was a long but very awesome day and it was great celebrate with all of our kids and their families. I wasn't able to take pictures during graduation, but I was hoping someone who took pictures would post them so I could put them in here. If someone posts them I'll put them in a blog but for now I don't have any, sorry.
A couple weeks before school was out we had our family fun day on the beach out in front of the Jungle Barn. The whole school and their families were invited to come on a Saturday and enjoy games and lunch and a fun time together. Me and a couple other teachers took charge of organizing and planning the day and it was fun coming up with all the games to play. We split the school up into 4 different teams, red, yellow, blue, and green. We had several games and competitions for everyone, the kindies through grade 6 and even the parents. To start the day we had each team make a team name, design a poster, make a sandcastle, and come up with a team cheer.

team green dragons

Team red love

Team yellow king

Team blue whale

The next game we had was probably the funnest of the day. Four way tug of war. We started with the kindies and went up all the way to the moms and then the dads.

 There really aren't many things more fun than watching kindergarteners in a 4-way tug of war.

Grades 1-3 were up next.

 Then grades 4-6 started to bring out the muscles.

The parents got their turns next and those were also very exciting to watch. The fathers and the mothers wee both extremely competitive.

 We also had a three legged race with mother-daughter and father-son.

The mothers had a straw tower building contest. Each team got a pack of straws and had 5 minutes to build the tallest tower they could.

 Our last game was our amazing race. Each grade level had to do a different part of the race.

Halfway through a parent from each team had to swim out to get their team flag and bring it back to a student to run back to the finish.

 At the finish line the teams had to build a human pyramid.

 Blue was the first team finished, then green and yellow finished at the same time.

Last weekend after graduation we took a retreat to the other island. It was so nice to take a break and relax for a weekend after the end of the year being so stressful.  We took a trip to Antique which is about an hour and a half away on the other island. We stayed in a "resort" right on the river and it was so nice and peaceful. I got a much needed weekend of relaxation and rest. It was also nice just to take a step off the island for a little bit and get out to see some more things. It was so awesome being over there in a completely different world. Boracay is basically city life everywhere and is covered with tourists everywhere. Antique is farm and jungle. There were a lot of people that lived on the river and used farming as a way of survival. It was also surrounded by jungle everywhere there weren't fields. It was really what I was thinking Boracay would look like before I came to the Philippines. It was really nice to get away from the city and get to a place where things were slowed down and relaxed. During the day we hung out in the river with some of the local kids that wanted to swim with us. We also took a hike into the jungle to see some waterfalls. The hike in itself was awesome, trekking through the jungle and seeing so many cool things. We got to the falls and it's a 7 tier waterfall with the bottom three being possible to get to. You had to use a climbing rope and climb up the cliff to do it, but it was doable.

This was the first tier of the water fall, or the seventh if you start from the top I guess. There is a lot more water coming down in rainy season than there was now.

 This is the third tier fall. There were some rocks to the side to jump from.

 Our guide started climbing straight up the waterfall. He is an amazing rock climber because there was not much to grab or step on but he did it no problem. The water is also falling a lot harder than it looks, it's still a strong force when it is falling on you, plus the rock is super slippery. I was definitely extremely impressed.

A cool looking flower.

 A lot of rice terraces just in the middle of the jungle.

 Wild pineapple.

 Everything is made out of bamboo, even the bridges. It's not as sturdy as it looks, and it doesn't look very sturdy.

 A water buffalo taking a bath in the river.

 Another bamboo bridge.

 A cable bridge. It was actually a lot less sturdy than the bamboo bridges. We were jumping and shaking it back and forth, definitely pretty fun but not super smart.

Looking over the river from the bridge.
The weekend was so relaxing and was just what I needed. It was also so much fun to see another part of the Philippines and see people living in a completely different style of life. It was also amazing how cheap it was also. It costs us 50 cents to take the boat to the other island. In the Philippines our group of 15 only needs to take one 11 passenger van. The van cost us $3 each to go the hour and a half trip to Antique. The place we stayed cost $3.75 per person per night and we stayed 2 nights. Our guide to the falls cost us $5 split between 15 of us. It was definitely the best $16 vacation I've ever been on.
I got back to the island and had a few things to wrap up in school with grades and finishing everything up for the year. I also had to come up with the schedule for summer school. One of the Filipino teachers who is staying over summer and I are doing summer school, we had to come up with the scheduling and everything to set it up. It has been good the last couple days to be able to rest and take it easy for he most part. I still have plenty of things to do, but just have more time to do it now.
It has also been interesting being here over Holy Week. The Thursday and Friday before Easter are both holidays here and so everybody takes their vacation to Boracay this weekend. There are so many people here, it's crazy. I've just been staying in for the most part because everything is closed and it's hard to walk anywhere with so many people everywhere. Holidays are also hard times to be away from your family. It's always hard but it's magnified on holidays and when you have so many memories of everything you'd be doing at home it makes it hard. It's part of being here and it's what I signed up for but there are times when it's just tough. I love what I'm doing and I know I need to be here but that doesn't mean I wouldn't buy a teleportation device if it existed.
Thank you for your love, support, and prayer. I appreciate it so much. I hope you all have an amazing Easter and enjoy your time with your family and take advantage of the time you have together, don't take it for granted. Enjoy it for me.

Time Flies!

I apologize that it's been a couple weeks since my last post. It has been an extremely busy couple of weeks. We had our graduation and last day of school set on March 27th and so we had a lot of things to do and get done for the end of the year. And then last week the Philippine Deped decided to make the decision that all graduations had to be before March 23rd so that it wasn't interfering with Easter week. So we now had 2 weeks to do 3 weeks of stuff. So we had to change up our entire schedule for testing and everything else to move up the end of the school year to the 22nd. It has been an extremely busy and stressful couple of weeks, but I can see the light t the end of the tunnel. We only have one more week of school, which is just so hard to believe. It seems like I just started and yet I'm already a week away from being done with my first year of teaching here.
I love teaching here, and I love my kids, and am going to miss them a lot, but I am definitely ready for a change of schedule. I am very excited for the summer and the different things that it offers me. I am excited to have a couple days to be able to just sit and relax. I love all the things that I have been able to recently and like that I don't have to search for things to do, but there has been so much stuff on my agenda for the last month and a half and then having to add even more at the end of the year as we changed our schedule has just worn me out. I am excited to just be able to relax and think for a couple days. I am also excited though for all the things I will be doing over the summer. I will be doing some traveling in the Philippines and am really excited to see more of the country and just to have some time off the island and the chance to do some fun things. In April I'm going to be going with one of the missionary families and another missionary to Donsol to swim with whale sharks. I am extremely excited for that, it'll probably be the craziest thing I do while I'm over here. We are also going to be doing a lot of hiking and exploring the land while we are there for a couple days. Boracay is beautiful, but there really isn't much to do here and not a whole lot to explore. It's going to be a really nice vacation break.
When I get back from that I'll have about a month of summer school. I will be one of only three missionaries here then and I was the only one who volunteered to do summer school. There is only one Filipino teacher who is going to be working over summer too as of right now, so I was a little disappointed in that because with only two of us it's going to be a lot busier than I was really expecting. That will definitely keep me busy over that month. I will also be running my Cagban feeding site still as well as picking up the Salvador feeding site on Wednesdays for the summer.
In May I'll be going with the other two missionaries to one of our Filipino teacher's hometown for a week. They have a big festival every year that we'll get to see as well as exploring the things around the area. We are really excited about being able to go do that and see some more of the Philippines and experience much more Filipino culture.
We'll get back from that at the end of May and have a couple weeks before school starts up again. It'll be a busy summer, but it will be full of a lot of fun and new things and I think will really refresh me and get me ready for another year of teaching. I still have a week to go but the excitement of summer is pulling me to the finish line. This next week we have our final exams and then we go into graduation rehearsal and then graduation on Friday. We're still scrambling to get everything done and ready, but we're going to make it through.
Recently I have been spending a large amount of my time working on our textbooks for next years. Some of us volunteered to put together the English textbooks for next year so that we could both save a lot of money as well as have a better quality textbook that suits us better. Two of the missionaries took up the first and second grade books. The sixth grade teacher took up the 6th grade book, and the 3rd/4th grade teacher and I took up the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade books. She focused on the 3rd grade book, I focused on the 5th grade book, and we both worked on the 4th grade book. We needed to finish them by the end of the school year so that they could be reviewed by our principal and sent off to make the books. We are putting the finishing touches on them right now and it is definitely a huge weight off of our shoulders having those almost finished. It was such an extremely large amount of work and I'm really glad I did it but it was so exhausting. I think probably the most awesome part of it though is that it has given me even more experience and knowledge. I learned a lot from putting those books together and it will definitely make me a better English teacher. I am also really excited to have those books next year instead of the books we had this year. There is so much more in these books and we were able to make them to fit how we want to teach them. I worked on the 4th and 5th grade books since that is what I am planning on teaching next year.
I have also been working on a MAPEH book for next year. MAPEH stands for music, art, physical ed, and health. It is a required subject here in the Philippines but just from what I've seen here it doesn't really get taught much. I have never seen a Filipino teacher teach any PE and even music and health I don't think gets much attention at all. I am obviously very passionate about PE and so that was the biggest reason I wanted to put this book together. It is crazy to me that these kids only get PE once a week when they see me during club time. I can understand a lot of the reasons why the teachers might not want to do PE and so I'm hoping to be able to put together a book with a lot of simple, quick, and easy ways to have physical activity in the class. I am really trying to stress how important it is, and also how simple it could be to do some things. I have started putting it together recently as we were finishing up our English books and when school is finished up I'll be able to have more time to work on it. I am really excited about it and I really hope that the teacher can learn from it and will use some of it.
I'm sorry it took me so long to get this blog out and I'm sorry I don't have more for you. I'll be able to post more once I have a little more time. I thank you for your continued support of me and of what I am doing here. Your support makes a huge impact in a lot of peoples' lives, including mine.

Giving

We've been up to a lot lately. I love it. Most of you know that one of the biggest reasons I came here was because of all of the things they told me I was going to be doing. They said I was always going to be busy and have a lot of different jobs and responsibilities here, and they were right. I have taken up so many different things and the more that I take on the more opportunities come my way to do even more. And I love it. I'm no longer a newcomer here, I have been here for long enough and have the experience that people know what I have done and are giving me more responsibilities to have even more important roles here. I am starting to experience some of the benefits of a longer term mission trip. I am so glad that I committed to 2 years because there is no way I'd be able to leave in a couple months. I am so excited about so many things for this summer and next year that it is hard to stay focused on this year at times. I am so blessed with all of the opportunities I have been given and so glad to see that I am being given even more.
This weekend we worked on another shelter that needed the entire roof replaced, and a few other things repaired. We had to take down all the nipa from the roof, which was actually a lot more work than I thought it would be. Then we replaced some of the bamboo that was rotted out up on the roof with new bamboo. Then we obviously had to put up the new roof on the shelter. That was the hardest and most time consuming part. Luckily we got some help from some Filipino men from the community and they were a lot better and faster than us. We also made a couple of benches for the shelter for the kids to sit on. I was working on one of the benches and a little boy came over and started to help me. He wanted to hammer so I let him hammer. He stayed with me and we did the entire bench together. He was a trooper. I definitely was scared for my thumb several times but he never managed to hit it so that was a success.

 Starting to take the old roof off.

 Finishing taking the old roof off.

 Starting to put the new roof on

 Building a bench with the help of this little guy.

Today I took my fifth graders on a field trip through the community picking up garbage. We had a unit in science about conservation and we learned about pollution and the effects it has on the environment. We also talked about ways we can help prevent or help fix problems of pollution and the importance of standing up against pollution. We brainstormed ideas of what we could do to help our environment and they came up with the idea of a beach clean up. I thought it was a great idea and was excited for it, except that we ran into a problem. The Philippine Gov't won't let anyone clean the beach because there are people who are paid to clean the beaches. Clearly they don't do that great of a job, but apparently they exist. So they won't let anyone clean the beaches because it would be taking away from someone's job. I'm not sure how much sense that makes since their entire economy is based off of people coming to see the beaches, you wouldn't think they would turn down people volunteering to help pick up all the trash. But there wasn't anything we could do about it so we decided to do a clean up within the community around the school. The cool part of it is that the community behind the school is almost entirely Muslim, so a lot of the area we cleaned up was the Muslim neighborhood. People were very surprised to see kids going around picking up garbage and it was just really neat to go around in our Agape uniforms and having people see us and what we are all about. The best part about it was seeing my kids going through the neighborhoods with a motivation to do there best and pick up as much trash as possible. It would have been easy for them to complain and not want to do it or be lazy about it, but they weren't. It was like a challenge to them to pick up as much as they could and that was so awesome to see. To see them walking around picking up trash with smiles on their faces was incredible. We even had to go back 20 minutes earlier than scheduled because we had filled up all of our trash bags so quickly.
 Here are some pictures of my kids from my feeding site at Cagban.

 She was trying to imitate me, she put on my backpack too and actually did a pretty good job.

They gave me flowers for Valentine's Day, probably off of somebody's plant, but flowers none the less.

My second graders also got in on the Valentine's Day gifts. They all made cards for me, and I also made cards for them. One of my 2nd graders even got me cologne which I thought was really funny.

One of most awesome opportunities I have had lately is being able to help out an Ati family on the island. The Ati are the original people of the island have been pretty much removed except for a few basically reservations on the island. The Ati don't have many rights, if any at all, so they are in very extreme poverty. A lot of the Ati on Boracay are homeless because they simply are given any opportunities for anything else. I have about a fifteen minute walk to my feeding site at Cagban because it's pretty far out into the jungle and so I walk through a lot of different areas on back roads and paths and things to get there. Along one of the roads 3 weeks ago there was an Ati family camping out under a tarp and living in that spot. There was an older couple (grandparents), a younger couple (parents) and four kids. On the way back from the feeding I decided to stop because I had everything with me from the feeding that I could give to them. I had vitamins for the kids, first aid, and the Bible lesson coloring sheets and some crayons. I gave them everything and they spoke about as much English as I spoke Tagalog so we weren't able to talk much but just were able to communicate our love and caring for each other. The next week I stopped by the family again and gave them everything on the way to the feeding. They were very thankful and we were even able to communicate a little better through our limited bilingualness. After the feeding I was walking back by them and they were cooking their dinner which didn't look like much more than rice and a little bit of some other things. We said hi and then they asked me to come join them for dinner. I was absolutely blown away. This family had nothing, they were homeless with nothing but a tarp and some pots and pans in their possession, with probably not enough food to fully go around, and yet they were willing to share what they had with me. Even more than that was the genuineness of it. It wasn't just a half-hearted offer or just a nice thing to do kind of offering, they were genuinely appreciative of what I had done for them and the relationship we had after just those 2 weeks was as if we had known each other for a year. It was amazing. Because of health reasons and because I didn't want to take the little amount of food they had, I didn't stay to eat. I was really excited to see them the next week though and offer to bring them a meal, and sit down and eat it with them. Unfortunately as I was going to my feeding this week the family was no longer there, they had packed up and gone somewhere else. It was sad that I wasn't able to see them again,  but my hope is that they are somewhere better and safer. I don't think I will ever forget that family though and their incredible act of kindness and selflessness. I was feeling good about what I was doing and what I was giving them, and they turned around and gave me a lesson on giving. We have so much and give so little, they have so little and were willing to give so much.
Kids say funny things, especially when they are learning English and say whatever random thing comes up to them. My second graders always come up to me and practice there English phrases that they know. They just like to be able to talk and feel successful in having an English conversation, which is awesome, but sometimes they say some pretty funny things. The other day one of my kids comes up to me as I walked in the door and says "Mr. Schmidt, you are not young". I don't know if you've ever been called not young, but it is actually a lot worse than being called old. If he would have called me old I would have been able to tell myself his English vocabulary is off, because I'm not actually old. But when he called me not young all I could do is say wow, that's actually very accurate.
Not everything they say is so bad though. I forgot to add this story to my last blog, so I'll share it now. A lot of the kids here are very fascinated with facial hair because its something Filipinos just don't typically have. So a lot of times they like to feel my beard and are very interested in it. One of the girls at my feeding site reached up to my beard and said "you're like Jesus". My response was "well sort of", but my response in my head was "I know, right?". Definitely one of the best compliments I've gotten, it may have been technically for a different reason then I had hoped, but still I'll take what I can get.
Thank you again for all of your support and prayer. Please continue to pray for our school and ministry as we go through a lot of changes for next year. Please also continue to pray for me as I am super busy with so many different things going on. I have been healthy for almost three weeks now, which is probably close to a record so please continue to pray for my health so I can continue to be at 100% to be able to do everything I do here. Mahal ko kayo. (I love you all).

Cagban Site Construction

After a week of being sick, I was able to get back to being healthy and got to do some things. We've been busy lately with so many different things going on in school, trying to get things done this year and also preparing for next year. It is crazy to think we only have 7 weeks left of the school year. The year went so fast and it seems like it just started. I am very glad that I will be back next year and I'm really excited about what I'll be able to do next year  now that I have a year here and know how to do things and how things have worked this year. I am so excited to be able to use the things I've found to be successful for an entire year next year instead of just half the year of finding things out. It's also exciting that we'll have a lot of the missionary teachers back next year to be able to build on what we've done this year. One of the biggest changes we are making next year is that we are hoping to have twice as many students next year, which is really exciting yet also a little worrying because of the fact that we need to get almost twice as many teachers to be able to support all of the students and I don't know how we are going to do that. We have a lot of our Filipino teachers leaving after this year and we should be able to get more Filipino teachers but as of now we have as many missionaries leaving as we do coming so we're still praying about that and being able to continue to provide our students with quality education and quality English education. We are doing a lot right now to try to get things ready for next year and one of the big things we are doing is putting together the English curriculum for all of the grades next year. We are building our own textbooks to both save money but also to be able to have more fitting and effective books for our students. It is a lot of work but it is going very well so far. Two of the missionaries are working on K-2nd grade and two of us are working on the 3-6th grade curriculum. It has been a really neat process because I don't know what I am doing after next year but putting together this curriculum is awesome to see how God is just giving me even more experience and opening up more opportunities for me in the future.
After being sick and having my feeding site be cancelled one week, I was able to get back to my feeding site last week and was so happy to be there again. I missed my kids and was just as happy to see them again as they were to see me. It has been so awesome to get to know all of the kids and become part of the community.
Even more exciting than being back at the site was this weekend being able to go to Cagban to be able to repair the site. Our building was in very rough shape and definitely needed a lot of repair. The walls were broken and one side was completely falling off. There was a large hole in the roof that needed repair and the the sides of the building needed some work to help keep the rain out. We also only have one bench in the building so we needed to build a bench on the other side so that we'd have room for all of the kids to be able to sit. It was so awesome to show up at the site and have all of the kids so happy to see me and then be able to fix up the building and really see how much it meant to the kids and the community.

The wall on this side was half gone and even the post on the front corner needed to be replaced to be able to hold the building up.

Adding a post to the center of the back wall to make it stronger.

Cutting bamboo. The entire building is made out of bamboo. Besides the nepa roof and the nails it is bamboo from top to bottom. Which is nice in the sense that it is extremely cheap for us to buy. Even the ladder was made out of bamboo. We asked if anyone had a ladder we could use to be able to get up to fix the roof and a man from the village went to our pile of bamboo and started to cut it into pieces and within 10 minutes had a ladder up in the building.

We were blessed again with people from the village who were willing to help and jumped right up to do the roof. The lady that cooks for our feeding jumped up there and started working on the roof. they tore all of the broken nepa out to get it ready to fix.

After fixing the hole in the roof in about a quarter of the time it would have taken us, they started adding nepa to the side to kept it a little more rainproof from the side.

We added a bench a long the entire side of the building. We had a bench on the other side and we copied that bench and duplicated it for the other side. We got the bench built but didn't get to finish the backrest or the slats on top of the bench. One of the ladies who is a leader in the village told us not to worry about it, she would put the men from the village to work on finishing when they got home from work. It made us laugh how she said it, but it was really cool to see the community coming together to finish it up and be able to put their own mark on it. That's what we really want to be able to do because these buildings are like community centers for these villages. They are used for so much more than just our feedings and it's awesome for us to be able to mostly just provide the money to buy the materials and the community is willing to fix it up. We love doing it and don't mind putting in the labor at all, but it really is awesome to see the people be able to take ownership of their building.

Our missionary kids are a huge blessing to the mission here and are able to connect to the kids here in so many different ways.

Putting up the wall.

Everyone helping out, taking the nepa up the ladder.

It is always fun to hang out with my kids and it was nice to be able to take some time off of the building to hang out with them.

They love playing frisbee, I bring my frisbee every week to be able to throw around.

Russ cutting a piece to use for the bench, while it is being used as a jungle gym at the same time.

Perfectly placed moose antlers. You can't do it much better than that.

I love these kids and all of the kids from the community that I am blessed to be able to work with every week.

Some other exciting things to happen this week were my stating to learn some Tagalog. I have had an idea to have my 5th graders teach me some tagalog but I was trying to find ways for them to do it where they were able to still learn and not just spend class time for me to learn. What I decided to do was have them create a spelling list for me. I have 12 students and they each come up with one word. The rules are that they have to be able to spell it correctly and have to be able to tell me what the word means in English. I think it definitely has educational value to them in working with vocab. They have to tie words from their own language into descriptions in English. It is also a ton of fun for them and it also is a way for me to show interest in them and their culture. I think that that is really one of the most important parts of it. I come into their country and spend so much time teaching my language and my culture and I think they really thought it was cool to see me be able to show visible interest in them and their culture. The deal is that on Fridays they have their spelling quiz in Englishand then I have my spelling quiz in Tagalog. For every word I spell incorrectly they get an extra point on their quiz. Unfortunately for them I'm super smart so I got 100% on my first quiz last week. Hopefully I'll be able to do it again this week.
Also last week one of the Filipino teachers offered to give Tagalog lessons to anyone who wanted them. So five of us showed up to get lessons. We had a fun time and definitely learned a little bit. It's not easy learning a language. The biggest thing that I have gotten out of it is learning how hard it truly is for these kids trying to learn English and I've learned a lot about what parts of it are the most difficult and how certain students struggle in certain areas for different reasons. It is helping me become better at teaching them English just because it gives me experience in seeing what they are dealing with.
We have a team here right now of 30 or 40 people working at the school and the feeding sites. It is always nice having a team here to give our kids some extra tutoring time and also all of the construction they do. They make such a huge impact here and provide so much extra help to the teachers and staff here at the school. This is a painting they did on a wall in our school today. Like all maps of the Earth made in the Philippines it's opposite of what ours looks like, but it is an awesome painting to have up and was cool for them to be able to use some of our kids for the handprints.

We are currently having registration for next year at school this week and are doing a lot of things for next year. We are busy preparing and praying for next year. Please pray for our school and our mission here of being able to provide quality education to these kids who don't have the ability to afford it anywhere else. Pray that God would deliver our teachers and staff and would provide us with everything we need to run the school effectively. We believe in what we are doing here and we are confident that God will continue to provide everything we need to be able to keep expanding His kingdom here at the school. Thank you so much for your prayer and support.