So we've been studying the middle ages in sophomore class and so naturally we discussed castles. I told the kids how I used to make sand castles on the beach with my brother and they were intrigued. Then I remembered the pile of sand in our front yard that we're going to use to stucco the house and I thought "yeah buddy." So there's the final masterpiece. The sand wasn't the best, but we made it work. The students had a blast anyway. As did I, I must admit. So we pretty much just had a sandblastin' time. The girls actually really got into it and even made flags for it later on and named it capitol of the Carolingian empire, and it stands even to this day. Pretty impressive for a sand castle, especially since it was assaulted by the two dogs this morning as they went for their morning frolic.

This is our tech. center, otherwise known as Ruan and Tara's living room. Quality, let me tell you. As you can see, we have a phone now, thanks to an antenna we just put up. Is that wild or what? It's so weird to hear the phone ring again. Actually to be honest it can be quite an annoying sound. Especially when you have to run half way across campus to tell someone they have a phone call. But anyway... we're on the map now. We exist. We've already had half a dozen phone calls including one from Mexico, so we're definitely on the grid. We're back on the power grid too, thanks to John for conveniently remembering a 500 watt inverter that he had tucked away in his suitcase. (Our previous two inverters have been fried by overdraw.) It took two weeks of working by candle power for him to remember his possession. (For which we all had a good laugh.) So now we are all enlightened. I guess it just takes two weeks worth of candle light to add up to enlightenment.
Oh yeah, if you want to call some time, the country code is 591 and the number is 7-160-2548. The best time to call is probably between 8-9 pm which is 4-5 pm your time (5-6 after daylight savings time goes into effect for you, because they don't have daylight savings time here) or Sabbath afternoon. So how do you like that? Probably not too much when you find out how much it costs. I'm guessing it's not cheap.

So the first week of school is over. Wow is it ever hard to teach in a foreign language! But God is helping me out big time. He's so cool like that. Fortunately I only teach every other day, which is just about perfect becuase it takes me pretty much all day to prepare my lectures and plan homework and in-class activities. And then there's the grading. It wouldn't be so bad if I had a teacher's edition with answer keys. But no such luck. Me and the English-Spanish dictionary sit and wade through stacks of papers together hours at a time. I just finished grading the freshman quizzes by candlelight. It was pretty depressing. Almost all of them failed. I would have blamed it on myself except that the only student who has complained about having a hard time understanding me so far got 90% on her quiz -- the best of the class. Obviously she's at least trying to understand me! But really, if the kids had read and studied what I assigned they would have done better even if they couldn’t understand much of my in-class lecture. Isn’t that the way it goes?

If you can't describe it, draw it. Pictures can save a lot of talking.

Explaining Assyrian siegecraft to my freshmen class.

It's amazing to me how ignorant these kids are of basic world geography. A lot of them can't even name the seven continents of the world let alone locate them on a map. I kind of get the feeling that they haven't been able to look at maps very much. The juniors couldn't tell me what continent England is in, and the freshman didn't have a clue where to find Egypt. Europe, Asia, South America, and North America were some of the guesses I got as to the location of the latter. Another particularly creative response placed Egypt "in Mesopotamia in North America on the banks of the Nile." At least he got the river right. But my personal favorite showed up on three different papers almost word for word, so it looks like we'll be having a little meeting with the ad. council about academic integrity, or the lack thereof in this case. Sad stuff. Cheating just seems to be a natural and accepted thing to do here. Anyway, I hope we can teach these kids to be honest. And hopefully I can teach them a little geography while I’m at it. So the answer that gave the cheaters away was “Egypt is located in South America, a part of Africa.” Ouch. But my class is not the only place the kids are having trouble. The other teachers are also noticing a general lack of basic knowledge in mathematics, science, literature, and even reading comprehension. Most of the students don’t have any idea how to work with time either. One of the questions John asked on his first quiz was “how many seconds are in a day?” One student’s response was “22.” Another one said “15 minutes or something like that,” and several even went so far as to ask “aren’t seconds and minutes the same thing?” Wow. Unbelievable. These are highschool kids and they have no concept of time or how to work with it. The whole sad situation does seem to shed some light on the culture here however. It’s no wonder that few people are ever on time, events are often late, and exact schedules rarely seem to exist. The question that remains though is whether they don’t want to learn about time because it’s not important to them, or if it’s not important to them because they haven’t learned how to keep it? Are they habitually late because they don’t know how to keep time, or is it because they just don’t think it’s important? And if they don't think its important, why should it matter? What makes me think that I should impose my concept of time on them? I do still think they should know how to figure out how many seconds are in a day though. That's just simple math.

Dianna and Rosalia during their first day of school ever. They were so excited, it was precious.

school starts
Going over the schedule and the handbook
"The handshake" The famous highschool welcoming activity.

We're hoping that this tower, or one like it will eventually bring internet to our school. Wouldn't that be something?
At the corner marker of the school property on a Sabbath afternoon excursion.

That white string you see is a worm from the inside of a smashed cockroach.

Just another critter
Bat in the outhouse

Another breach in the dike

Trying to drill a new well

B-e-a-utiful. Yep, that's how you spell that.

Big news! Looks like I'll be teaching history and geography for the freshmen, sophomores, and juniors. Or primero, segundo, and tercero as they call them. I have no textbook yet, (I'm supposed to pick it up tomorrow) don't know the grading system or curriculum, and can barely speak, let alone read in Spanish. Wild huh? I'm excited though. What an opportunity! A lot of the students are non-adventist and I'm praying God will give me wisdom and skill to share His love with them. In other words, I've been praying for the gift of tongues! Just kidding. But I have been praying for help to learn Spanish. Maybe this teaching position is a partial answer to that prayer. It'll be a work out at any rate.