What you've missed...

Ok... so I felt a little guilty posting about the luxury beach vacation without posting anything about the daily life things that I've been doing lately. Here is my attempt to reconcile....

During our life science unit, we briefly studied animal instincts. The kids tried to build bird nests to demonstrate that they do NOT have that instinct!

Three of the Lincoln teachers and myself were invited to the home of my student, Zuriel (the little guy in the picture) for lunch. His brother Isaí is on the right. Their parents work at Lincoln and they are the most precious family! Just look at that sign above them, "Welcome to your Mexican house". After eating, we went to a local park and played football and soccer for a couple of hours. It was a really good time.... and quite possibly my first time playing soccer!

There are still friendly (or not so friendly) guests in our classrooms. This is a picture of a black widow that I was fortunate enough to watch as she caught her prey, a bee. I took a video and used my awesome Mac computer's abilities to create a video for my kids to watch. It was perfect timing since we were reading Charlotte's Web and also studying insect life cycles and food chains. I will try to post that video somehow, someday.

A couple of weeks ago was the fifth anniversary of the kid's club in Arenales, where some of us have been volunteering on Saturdays. There was a big party, and Holly, Christen, and I were in charge of face painting. It was a big hit, even though our designs were pretty bad since the only tools we were given were QTips and very sticky, thick paints. The kids didn't seem to mind, though. Of course. Only Americans like me have high expectations for all things, including face paints.

Megan, Melissa, Christen, and Myself
(On a side note, 4 Mexicans have now told Christen and I that we look like twins. She is the girl next to me in this picture. What do you think?? We don't see it.)

Birthday parties are a big deal here. The biggest so far for my class was Michelle's ... her mom brought lunch plates for each student in both third-grade classes, and gave out boxes of chocolates to each student after school!