Sharing the wealth

When I was going through the process of getting my driver's license I had this little prayer in my heart. I don't remember if I actually vocalized it, but I certainly thought it. Being able to drive here is a huge privilege that many people just will not be able to have. If I passed my test and got my license I wanted to be able to use it to help people. As I posted earlier, I was able to get my license and I've been so pleased with the number of opportunities I have had to share that blessing. Maybe I'm seeking out opportunities, maybe I'm just more aware of them, but I think the Lord provides those opportunities if you want them.

I've been able to give people rides to places, pick up supplies for our school "camp", and just take people on a drive. Last week I was able to use my car in another way. My friend and co-worker Brian is very involved with his church group. One of the things he does with his church is help provide food for some of the labor workers here. I believe they go once a month and give out bags of food. They look for buildings that house these workers, work with the building harris (manager) to identify who needs the food, gather the food, and distribute it.

The bags had oil, sugar, rice, lentils, and I'm not sure what else. The building harris had given the men tickets and they have to have a ticket to get a bag- otherwise it gets out of control. These men work so hard for almost nothing. They are packed into the housing and are not treated very well here. There are women too, but not in the same building. Almost all of these workers are here without family. Most work and send the little money they make back home for their families. I think most of them are from India and Bangladesh.

Brian had invited me to come with him before but I got sick and wasn't able to make it. This time we had to work on Saturday and I had a vet appointment with one of the fur babies. I made it home right before we had to leave and a part of me did not want to go. I just wanted to chill at home for awhile. Luckily I caught myself and thought- you never regret giving service, get off your lazy bum and go.

It really helped to put things in perspective. Yes, there are parts of my life that I'm not happy with, but the reality is that I have A LOT to be very thankful for. I'm spoiled really. I have been blessed with a very privileged life and I am so grateful for that. I was happy to give a little bit of service and I was happy my car was being used to share the wealth. Thanks for the invite Brian.

We met at a house where they had already assembled the bags. 

We loaded up the cars, careful to count the number of bags. We didn't want to put too much weight in the cars.
I'm not sure how much each bag weighed but I'd say at least 5 lbs/2kg

My car full with about 50 bags. There were 300 bags in total. 

I've heard it doesn't always go this smooth. The men are to line up to get the bags and they actually did this time.  

They had tickets for the bags. 

This is Brian. 

That's my car helping. :) I actually helped load the cars too so I actually did some work, not just provide my car. 

Camp Pitch Our Tents

I didn't do many blogs about school and things we were doing there. I'm going to try to do a little more of that in future. This year I was too busy just trying to make it through the year. Hopefully there will be more successes next year that I will WANT to blog about. The kids have been done with school for 10 days, the teachers for 4. I think I'm ready to talk about it now. Or at least the last couple weeks of it.

As a whole grade we decided to go to camp for the last two weeks of school. Many of the teachers did it last year and wanted to do it again. It was a Teachers Pay Teachers thing that one of the teachers had found. (side note: Teacher's Pay Teachers is the best website ever! https://www.teacherspayteachers.com)  It's basically a fun way to review the things we learned this year with a fun camp theme. We still did work and learning was still happening, so it wasn't just a free for all at the end.

We sent a note to parents and had the students bring in some money. We bought shirts for all the students and a WHOLE BUNCH of supplies for the different snacks and science experiments we did. Each class had a different color shirt, which made it nice at recess because I could tell which class students were from.

They had a camp notebook that had all of the worksheets and stuff. They put on a play from the camp notebook. Some students were the actors and some were stage crew. They actually performed the play for a 4th grade class. We wrote letters to next year's teacher, to next year's 2nd graders, made a commercial for a book they recommend for next year's 2nd graders, various math games, making paper airplanes, blowing bubbles on their desk, making quick sand with corn starch (HUGE disaster- almost quit camp after that one. It was terrible), s'mores in solar ovens, making clay canoes, making a lava lamp, and various camp snacks. They were allowed to bring in a small tent from home, blankets and pillows. They could use them when we had reading time.

Overall camp was a lot of fun and a great way to end the school year. We had a great time and many of my students said camp was the best thing about 2nd grade. :)

*there's a formatting problem and it won't let me move this movie to where I would like it to be. This is just a video of the lava lamps we made.

My class t-shirt

the whole 2nd grade- it's insane how big this school is

After the quick sand catastrophe I made the class earn back the privilege to attend camp. We spent 1.5 hours reflecting on what went wrong and how we would do it better. They came up with these camp rules from that reflection.  

Practicing for the play. They made the campfire in art class. 

Will it float? Making a canoe out of clay and how many squares can it hold- if it floats at all. 

Solar oven s'mores. They made predictions on how long it would take to melt and monitored the progress. 

I have since learned that we should have had black paper on the bottom and covered it with plastic wrap to help the marshmallows melt. The chocolate melted just fine. After this I was "the best teacher ever"

Fishing mix- fishes, fishing rods, and nets. 

This was bug juice. We use apple juice and gummy worms. As I gave it to the class I felt a little weird about it but about died laughing (inside, not out where the kids could see) when I heard one of the students tell the other students to drink the juice and then eat the worm. Really- it's bug juice!!!

This is dirt pudding that me made, and you can see the one tent I had in my class.