Life Recently

I woke up this morning to a beautiful heavy snowfall! It was so awesome! This week has been crazy, and the weekend is even crazier, but the beauty of nature has a way of making everything okay. It’s an impression of God’s beauty, which makes even more sense! We had a movie night last night in the gym, the student council sold popcorn and pizza. Today (Saturday), I had speech practice from 11-11:45, Saturday School goes from 12-2, students have open gym from 2-4, then the school is hosting a Saturday Market, which is like a garage sale for the village.

One of my students came in late one day this past week and said “I didn’t get to have my coffee this morning!” Feeling completely sorry for the kid, I asked why. He said they didn’t have any water. Well, that happens. People get busy and forget to do their chores. Depending on how many water containers you have in your house depends on how often you pack water. I pack water every couple of days and it just becomes part of life. It’s no big deal, just something else you have to do. Packing water beats dumping a honey bucket any day.

Every student in school gets free breakfast and lunch, and every student up until high school gets snacks every day. We try and get fruit, since it’s not easy to get fresh food in the village. But sometimes it may be a few crackers. We did a survey one time and found students’ top three reasons to come to school: 1) to eat, 2) to use a flushing toilet, and 3) to see friends. 

We’ve been having problems with the village generator. The lights blink on and off sometimes and the power goes off for an hour at a time some days. So they finally got the parts in order to try and fix it. So last Saturday they planned to shut all the power off in the entire village for 5 hours. Every cabin is run off that generator; the school alone has it’s own. So even though we had Saturday school for a while, I was glad I had a warm place to go. The temperatures had dipped down into freezing, and because the houses are off the ground, it’s even colder in the house. So for the hours I wasn’t at the school I was pretty chilled. I can look at it as prepping for my winter hikes. :) But the villagers just had to deal with no power for those cold hours. I’ve counted by blessings many, many times since moving here.

Well, I cut my hair right before I came back in August and knew I’d have to cut it again before Christmas break, so I invested in some sharp scissors over the summer. (Last year all I could find to use was an old, dull pair of scissors. It wasn’t a pretty site.) So anyway, I’m getting better at trimming my hair. The good thing about having it short is I can just chop anywhere. At least, that’s how I go about it. I don’t care too much about how I look, but I hate the feeling of greasy hair. So I like it short.

We had a staff volleyball game Saturday and it was a lot of fun. It’s a great time to put away all the paper work and have some fun with your colleagues. Okay, it is fun, but I’m really competitive. :) So I had some good ole’ battle injuries after the game. It was a lot of laughs. Speaking of laughs, I’ve acquired a new nickname from the staff: “Giggles.” I get the giggles pretty easily and it’s really hard to stop. I get them while teaching, in meetings, or just having a conversation. During our last in-service the site administrator stood up and announced, “Welcome to the session, full of Kim’s laughing.” Well, better a day of laughing than a day of boredom. Everyone eventually cracked up, so even if I’m not a great teacher at least I can say I’m cheerful.