Saturday, March 15, 2008

Semana Santa y Semana Pascua.

I have been a bad blogger this year. I haven't updated very much, and for that I am sorry. School has been forging ahead steadily. We had a fun ecology week, in which we took a field trip to the Bosque de los NiƱos, a place we went last year also. It really is a perfect field trip for these city kids who never get muddy and get the chance to really be among trees. We finished up ecology week with a brave endeavor. Four of us teachers brought our classes out and we set up six centers where the kids could do things like make recycled paper, create "creatures" out of garbage, make signs petitioning the school to stop using paper towels and paper cones (for drinking), and sort trash in a relay. The kids did very well amidst our craziness and I've got more than one of them boycotting styrofoam plates from the school store and one mom told me that her son now writes on the backs of old napkins at home because "Miss Peterson would like it".

This week we had mini olympics, another great chance for the city kids to roll in the grass and run around freely. After the two longest school days of all time, I am now enjoying the first day of my glorious two-week spring break! In Mexico, they always get the two weeks surrounding easter off for spring break, the first week is semana santa (holy week) and the second week is semana pascua (Easter week). For those who don't know, I will be coming back to Florida on Tuesday the 18th for the wedding of my best friend... which seems so surreal after living in my Mexican bubble for a year and a half...

In other news, I thought I should post something about what has occupied a lot of my time over the past few months. I found a master's program at the University of Florida that pretty much encompasses all of my favorite things about teaching. It is a specialization in Language Arts and Children's Literature, and it focuses a lot on writing, and language acquisition, and multicultural children's literature. I spent about one solid month studying for the GRE, preparing application essays, requesting letters of recommendation and transcripts, and marveling at how easy it was to do it all from another country. I sent the application at the end of February and am still waiting to hear.

Lately, though, I've been wondering about my decision to move back to the states and pursue this degree. Although at first I felt a definite peace about the decision, I've been thinking a lot about the Kingdom of God here on earth and what that means for me. I have been wondering if I should use my gift of singleness and freedom from debt (so far...) to continue working for God abroad, while I can do it easily. If I get my masters now it will mean doing it entirely on loans, something I haven't had to resort to yet, and something that would require a "normal job" to pay them off.
So, I would appreciate prayer for this situation. I just want to know where God would want to use me. Where ever that is, I'll go!