Day 26: Typically...

So, typically my day begins at 6 am when Celeste and I try our best to ignore our alarm clocks and the crowing roosters and curl underneath the covers for just a few more moments to precious sleep. When we finally roll out of bed, we all eat breakfast together, iron our clothes and wash our faces to try and be out the door by 6:45.

We walk about 10 minutes to school and spend the next 30 minutes doing any last-minute lesson preparation and welcoming the students to school.

On Mondays and Fridays we have special chapels for 30 minute where some of our girls do dance routine to praise and worship music, and we learn about a new Bible story. (The Bible story is always told in spanish, so it's always fun to try and guess which one it is by the way Sully has the kids act it out.)

Then we move on to classes, we have a different one at a different time everyday, so the first class varies day to day, before we break for breakfast at 8:50. Most of the kids have already eaten breakfast at home, so they play football out on the field instead, but some (like me!) prefer to eat about 6 times a day instead of 3. The school provides the breakfasts, but they invariably involve cheese, beans or tortillas in some form or fashion.

After breakfast we have a couple more classes until we break again at lunch, this time for almost an hour because most of the kids parents will cook food for them at home and bring it to them at lunch time so they can have a hot meal. I've grown to love this part of the day the most because I get to see and attempt to talk to the parents, and the kids usually fight fofr who gets to sit next to Meez Sahmer. Somedays it can be a little overwhelming, but I love it because I sneak the kids whichever food I don't want to eat. (Boiled bananas? No thank you.)

Since lunch is so long we invariably wind up playing football once more, or playing on the playground. I prefer the playground because sometimes running around in the heat gets to be too much for me. (That, and I tend to forget that these are children I'm playing with and they only weigh about 40 pounds and will easily fall over when you push them out of the way to get to the ball... whoops.) Plus... I have ALREADY been hit in the head by a flying soccer ball.

After lunch we have two more classes and then school ends. This is the real fun... After school we spend about thirty minutes preparing lesson plans and materials for the next day and then we have after-school activities. The boys come back adn play soccer on the field (yes... for the third time that day... they are insanely good.) And the girls come back for dance practice (yay!) on tuesdays and thursdays and cooking class on friday! Finally I get to use my talents! I am a natural born-baker and a natural born-dancer, so the kids looooooove these after school activities almost as much as I do.

Finally around 4 or so, we walk back home, watch Friends, wash our clothes and cook dinner. I've lived in a house with four girls before, but I have never lived like this. We truly live in constant community. We eat all of our meals together, we work together, we see each other 24/7.... there are absolutely no surprises, but I love living in a "whats yours is mine and whats mine is yours" kind of state.

I might be bringing this back to the States with me... so get prepared.