Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Jet Lee

Well, it was good times all around the last week and a half. Two Saturdays ago mi hermano came for a little visit. It was so good to have him here. I gave him a tour of the house, which took all of 5 minutes, and showed him how I live life down here. I liked saying, ¨El es mi hermano, esta visitando me.¨ It was great.

Keith was put to work while here though. I did give him some warning ahead of time (what a nice sister I am). He did some shoveling, some wheelbarrow carrying, some hammering, and sludging through mudd-ying. I just really love that when I reference things, I know that he´ll know what or who or where I´m talking about.Just that knowledge makes a difference.

Unfortunately, my brothers time here was short.Only a week, bummer. But it was a fabulous week. I think he even learned some Spanish (one of the guys befriended Keith and made him speak Spanish).

In other news. I started teaching again this semester. The kids have been on their summer vacation for the past two months. I didn´t realize until Monday how much I had missed my kids. It was also a little sad because some of my students had moved on to middle school. So now I have new students, and new names to learn.

Speaking of new names. On Monday, we had our first class of the semester with the little 1st and 2nd graders. We played a name game to get to know the kids in our class. We all sat in a circle with one less chair than people. I had them stand up, say their name and something they liked to do. If anyone else like the same thing they had to get up and switch chairs. The person left without a chair would do the same thing.

A girl named Rita got up, introduced herself and something she liked. Cool! A girl with the same name as my mom. I can remember that. Next came Sander, he needed a little more prompting. Cute kid though. Then Carlos, the crazy teacher´s son. You´d think he´d be a little more behaved, or maybe not. He yelled his name and dove for a chair before the next kid could leave it. Then Angi, she was in my class last semester, cutest little girl ever and smart too. A few more kids got up, and we were left with one more. The little guy stood up, and said his name. At first I thought I´d heard wrong. ¨Say your name again.¨ ¨Jetli,¨(pronounced Jet Lee). I thought he was pulling my leg, I unsuccessfully suppressed a laugh and asked again. This time a few other kids repeated his name for me. This time I knew. It was too good to be true. I have a kid in my class named Jetli. I turned to Rebecca, chuckled and declared how awesome I thought that was.

Jetli and the rest of the kids had a good time learning some English, and making paper airplanes the rest of the morning. I love these kids. Everyday I keep thinking about how much I´m going to miss them when I have to leave in two months. I will cry. It´s for certain. Until then, I just get to have some fun, teach them English, and hang out with Jetli.