Week Two

This is week two and it's almost over. I'm very glad because it has been another stressful, but fun one. Cameron and Dameon came back from Jeh on Monday. They said the beaches are gorgeous over there, but the waves aren't as good. I would rather waves than beach, personally. Of course there is no electricity over there. You can charge your camera with a solar panel. Two of our guys, Chad and Paul, went over there. They are either going to be best friends or worst enemies. I don't envy them. They are opposites in a lot of ways. Paul is very physical, he grew up on a farm. He is crazy and will try anything without regard for his own safety. Chad is not physical at all. He is a little over weight and avoids crazy stuff. Even so, he gets hurt all the time. He cut his foot open wading in one of the pools and it wouldn't stop bleeding. He is very accident proned. I wonder which will end up in the hospital first.

The later in the week it is, the more crazy the kids are. I'm not looking forward to tomorrow. They have more and more trouble sitting still in class. I've got a couple with bad ADD or something. If you get on their case, as least they sit down and be quiet, if not listen and learn. I see that I need to get harder on these guys. They listen when I put my foot down, so I need to do it more.

Today I was doing an object lesson about faith. I was trying to get a kid to fall over backwards and I would catch her. It took me forever to get someone to volunteer. The only kid that would was too big, I thought I would be crushed if he fell into me. Finally this girl volunteered, but she wouldn't actually fall. So I had one of the bigger guys catch me. They had a lot of fun and we were making so much noise we were disturbing every other class in the building.

Day before yesterday we went out surfing and the waves were huge! Cameron said we've been getting some 10 foot sets. One day, they all run together, Cameron brought Nicole out to learn surfing. The 10 foot sets were rolling in and she got really scared. He shouldn't have brought her out on such a big day. When you see a head and a half or double overhead wave rolling in, you have respect at least. Dameon will pull into anything. He has no fear. He gets pitched sometimes because he pulls in so late.

Last night I went surfing for about 45 minutes or so. The tide barely got high enough before dark. The waves were small. I was the only one out there and it felt great. I knew it was the first time I would get to go in awhile. The sun was going down and I wanted a good wave really bad. So I prayed about it. Right after that a night size one came in. I pulled into it backhand. It kinda scared me because I'm bad at backhand and I didn't want to get slammed face first into the reef, which you can see all do clearly when your back is the wave. But I pulled through it and it felt great. A nice ending to a surf session.

I'm getting better about making lesson plans. At first I couldn't make them because I had no idea what to put down. Now I now how long it takes to do stuff and what I want to cover. I think my lecures are starting to go a little smoother. I can lecture fine, but it's getting the kids to listen. For some reason their little conversations are more important than what I'm saying.

It was obvious when I did my science test yesterday. The average grade without a curve was 64% or something. After the curve the average was 73% and the median was 64%. Half the people were less than that. One kid was 27%. How do you even do that? He didn't answer a lot of the questions. It was mostly multiple choice too. You can't loose by guessing on those. I had a big group who were over 100% after the curve and then a bunch of really low people. Not so much in between. We''ll see if I can get those to try a little.

We got care packages from home. I got some much appreciated food! Also some stuff for my class. Ben got a fan. It is heavenly! It makes our nights go so much smoother. You don't know how much a fan means until you have to sleep on the equator without it or a/c.