Coming Home!

Well, the time has finally come. I can officially say that I have survived my first year living overseas(Barring any complications in the next 3 days). More than survived though. Enjoyed, accomplished, loved, and learned. When I came, I was still unsure, was this really what God wanted me to do? Was this where God wanted me to go?
Now, I am certain I have been in the right place. They say hindsight is 20/20 and things are definitely looking clearer, now that I can look back. I can see now that this year was about building relationships. Relationships with fellow teachers, with my American teachers, with students and building my relationship with my heavenly Father.
I have really seen this in action in the last two weeks and am thankful to have God point out to me so clearly before I left that this was the plan he had for me and that I did and still am completing it.

škola v prirade (School of Nature)
Last week I had the priviledge of going with 72 of my students (2nd-4th) graders to škola v prirade, which is basicly a week long camping trip, with some learning activities. There was only one other teacher on the trip (out of the 12 of us) who was fluent in English. All the others have various levels. Sometimes it was incredibly frustrating, because I got little or no translation for the big meetings and was always having to tell the students in my group that I didn't know what was happening, the rules of the game, or what we were doing next. Most of the time, however, I really enjoyed myself and got to know some teachers better. It was a very relaxed and fun atmosphere and I felt like I fit in. Magda (who is quickly becoming a close friend) and I had many chances to streghten our relationship. Magda is the 3rd grade class teacher and she speaks the least amount of English of all the teachers I work with. She has a very, very basic vocabulary and can put very simple sentences together, but talking with her is a struggle. However, she is incredibly willing to try and talk to me. On the way to camp, we stopped in a little town to get ice cream. This town is where Magda's mom lives and so she came to see her and Magda was so excited to introduce me to her mom that she did the whole introduction in English, even though her mom could not understand her! We had so much fun together. We always end of laughing about the words we don't know and trying to figure them out. Towel is a very funny word when you don't know it and have to go into the bathroom and point to where one would be to figure it out. On the way home, she pointed out the hospital she was born in and the high school she attended.
This was also a good time for me to bond with some of my students. I had a group of 16 students along with another teacher. Because I was in their group, my students all had to speak and get instructions in English. Many students would be unhappy about this, but my group welcomed me with open arms. Two of the girls insisted that I sit between them (actually sharing 2 chairs between the 3 of us, since we were short on chairs) at every meal. I even helped make up a new word in Slovak, which was a huge hit with my group. We were the black group, but our name tags were purple so we called ourselves the čierlovi group, the Slovak equivalent of blaple (black-purple). Our group made up a chant and a song for our name and loudly (proudly) called it at every chance they got. After we arrived back in Bratislava and everyone had been reunited with their parents, one of the girls on my team saw me, came running up to me, threw her arms around me and gave me a huge hug. It warmed my heart!

Field Trips and Last Week of School
This week I was able to go on 3 field trips, 2 with Magda's class. This offered us some more time to bond. One of our field trips was to the traffic playground - no not taking the children to a busy intersection and letting them play. It's actually a child size couple of blocks complete with sidewalks, streets, traffic lights, zebra crossing and train crossings, where kids learn how to follow street signs. Well, the lady that did the instruction for our group was awful. She spent 40 minutes outside slowly going over and over and over things (this was after the 30 minutes of instruction inside). She was telling our students things like "very bad" and even made a couple of them cry. But, it was an opportunity for bonding. And we did. Magda and I found it easy to communicate how frustrated we were at her and how much we didn't like the way she was treating our students. We find that sometimes words aren't really necessary.

So, God has been good this year, and I know that next year will be better (although still painful at times).

If you would like to hear more stories, please let me know by email. I would love to visit with as many of you as is possible while I am home. I will be home on July 2nd(Yippeeee!) and will be leaving again around the 18th or 19th of August. I look forward to seeing you all and having a chance to share more of the past year. Thank you again for all of your support, cards, e-mails, care packages and mostly prayers.