One Day at a Time

First I would like to thank all of you who commented on my last post. It means a lot to me (I will explain just how much below)! J Don’t forget to give Lizziey some love as well please…

I am aware of the fact that I begged everyone who reads this blog to post a comment. Are you asking yourself why? Why would a silly comment be so important? Well I will tell you, but not quite just yet….

Last week was pretty rough for me. I dealt with a variety of problems and situations from different areas; from classrooms to the entire school, and even to our home, the core of the issues revolved around two things (or rather the lack thereof): organization and communication. No matter how well I started my day, I seemed to always end up feeling frustrated and stressed out by the end of the day. 

As proof here are my Facebook statuses for that week:

• Oct. 10th: Every morning I wake up and DECIDE that it will be a good day. I ERASE all the problems of yesterday and START ANEW. I continually PRAY for patience, understanding, compassion and wisdom during my day. "WWJD? I say!" But at the END of the day, I am left feeling pretty much the same way as YESTERDAY. So I will WAIT for tomorrow to start again; knowing that I at least can make it through the end of ONE DAY.

• Oct. 11th : ‎"The tiniest fragment of obedience, and the profound Truths of God are yours straight away" Oswald Chambers. Then later on: Had a pretty good day! Thank you God! :D

• Oct.12th: ...

• Oct. 13th: IDK what to do anymore!

 One day I even dared to think about what it would be like to just go back home, something I couldn’t fathom up to that point. I am still here, so I obviously made it through that day! I had placed each situation in the hands of God. Continuous reading of the Bible and devotionals, reminded me that this was all part of the process and that God had an ultimate plan and purpose for it all. I know that God is molding and shaping His character in me, but did I mention how much it hurts? Let me tell you, it’s not easy! I don’t think any amount of warning can truly prepare you for it, but knowing what is “really” going on helps… if only a little at least.

Anyways, after making it through all the frustrations of that week, I made it to the weekend. We went to Cape Coast and celebrated the “year of the Holy Cross Brothers” (still not sure what it means…) on Saturday, and on Sunday the lights were out most of the day so I just “chillaxed”. Today, Monday, I had a pretty good day. We celebrated my birthday with the sisters at lunch, and I even got some cake and ice cream!

Lizziey made my birthday month, pre-week and day pretty special! She got me some really cool oil pastels, which I’ve already started using. :P As I’ve mentioned a gazillion times before, I can not (yes! it can be two separate words) imagine being here without her. Lizziey has a way of pushing me to be better every day, in more than just one way. She comes up with all the good ideas and plans, and I am just happy to follow her lead. Usually I am the person who widens other people’s horizons, but she is the one who constantly widens mine. Her support helps to keep me motivated and focused on the task in front of me. Your support, reader, also helps me immensely. It reminds me that someone from far way is still reading these words and waiting to hear more...

Nyame Irshiwau,

~Jamie

Happy Birthday, Jamie!

Today we celebrated the birth of the lovely Jamie Anne Thordsen.

While I don't want to overlook one of my best friend's most special days, this day of celebration leads me to blog about another "Jamie" as well.

Jamilatu is my little friend at the convent. She is the cook's daughter and will turn 6 on November 2nd. Today Jamila wanted to hang out with us to celebrate while her mom went into town. 


Oh the fun we had!

We started out on a walk to the school. My little friend dressed in a pink dress skips merilly along holding my hand while telling me (for the hundreth time) that she wants to be my flower girl.  Jamila doesn't really even associate flower girl with wedding, it's just her dream of wearing a princess dress.  As we walked along the crunchy clay path this evening she told me:

"Oh, Madam Lizziey, it would be nice to walk on rose petals!" 

We walk for a while, discussing serious 6-year-old topics like ice cream, water bottles, and what it would be like to be a sheep. As we wander back to the house, Jamila asks if we can do pilates.

She really is a girl after my own heart.

In the middle of the stretching and twisting of our bodies, I am aware of my feet. They are dust covered, calloused, dirty. The only thing that covers them is an inch-piece of webbing from my Chacos. There are little shells sticking to them from the rooftop terrace.

I think about walking on rose petals, and I come up with only this thought: I'd rather be barefoot, exposed, completely feeling what is under my feet than have pedicured toes stuffed inside a shoe.

Madam Jamie joined us after the sun set and together the three of us colored and created a book entitled, "Fox." The book is actually my KG 2 project for Friday, but Jamila didn't realize she was my guinea pig and I didn't tell her. :) 

After a nice dinner and some more reading of books and tired giggles, Jamila left Jamie and I to our routine of getting ready for the next day of school and getting ready for bed. 

Twenty-two years ago a beautiful person was brought into this world. Today, just as important, that young woman  is building foundations despite the challenges of living and working thousands of miles from the comforts of home. Like most foundations, it's not always noticeable until there's a crack.  When you are dealing with Jamie Anne, there will be no cracks.  The point is, her birthday was shared with our young friend.  It's the every day conversations over coloring, reading, and the patience that comes with working with kids that makes my friend amazing.  It's that investment that makes life not just worth living, but worth celebrating.

Her life is a journey, a twisting path of perseverance, change and strength. I pray she walks her path -from rose petals to rocky geodes- never forgetting every trail is Holy Ground and chooses not only the road less traveled, but does it barefoot: willing to feel all of the nuances life brings her way.  

Giving up Control

Yet another week has flown by… Okay, okay, two weeks to be exact! In my defense, it is incredibly hard to write a blog post during the week. *Sigh* I now have a deeper appreciation of what it takes to grade homework and class work assignments. I was never one of those kids who needed to have their work back and graded right away, but now I understand why sometimes teachers do take forever to grade assignments. For a class of 40, it takes about 1 ½ hours to grade the simplest of assignments. Yeah I am sticking to that excuse, I can’t blog because I have too much grading to do! However, I will work on my blogging so that all subsequent blogs will hopefully be written on weekends. Yayy! :D In the meantime, be patient with me please… 0:-)

A quick update:

Lizziey and I made it into Accra the Thursday before last. We thought we were doing passport/visa things, but instead we ended up having a walk-about “tour” of Accra while on the hunt for a cell phone and some money. Seeing as it was a school day, and we still had class on Friday, we decided to head back as soon as we were done eating. At 4pm we managed to get a cab that would dare take us back to Kasoa for 20 cedis (about $15)! Although it is technically a 90min. drive to Kasoa, the traffic is so bad that it took us 4 hours to get back. Needless to say it was a very long and exhausting day!

On Sunday Lizziey and I accompanied Mimi (B3 homeroom teacher) to her church “Assemblies of God”. I loved the English part of the worship, and enjoyed the rest of the Fante one, but the preaching was difficult to follow for 2 reasons: 1) The pastor insisted on screaming his sermon in his heavily accented English, 2) A translator repeated everything the pastor said in Fante, also very loudly. The combination of all this and the heat was perfect to create a headache. But we will continue to search for more churches.

Last week was pretty “normal”, each day with its own ups and downs.

On Friday we had or first spelling bee. The top 5 students of each class, picked during the week, competed for 1^st  place overall. Amazingly the B1 students beat all the older kids!  Saturday, Lizziey and I cleaned our room and did our laundry… or tried to since we were out of clothes pins and  it had started to rain… Sunday we were supposed to go to Takoradi with the sisters but decided to stay and have a spa day. We did pedicures with our buckets, tanned on the roof, and even managed to make our own pizza (thanks to the pizza kit Lizziey’s mom had sent). All in all, a pretty perfect weekend! J

Back to the present…

As Lizziey mentioned in her blog, every single day here is different. Each day presents its own new challenges and rewards, as well as new learning experiences. So far I’ve learned: how to make the perfect spaghetti sauce out of tomato paste, the 101 uses for cardboard, how to procrastinate while still actually getting things done and how to properly treat a spider bite. Ok, I am still working on that last one but with Lizziey’s help and her well-stocked “pink bag” (a.k.a. emergency kit), I think I will make it.

 Anyways, the constant ups and downs of my days let me focus on the most important thing in my life: God. I am learning to rely on God fully, even for the day-to-day things. It's easy to turn to God when we realize we can no longer do things on our own. However, it is because we believe that we can do certain things without His help that we get into trouble in the first place. Depending on God for the little things is harder than for the big things. So I will continue to lay everything that I am and have before Him. I will continually give my life to Him, so that He may use it however He sees fit. I will trust that He has the best intentions for me, and He knows what is best for me. It may be easier said than done, but I fully intend to see it through.

Nyame Inshirawu (God Bless You)

~Jamie

P.S. Some things we love about our days: starry night sky, when kids “get it” (our lessons), eating fried plantains (yumm), getting caught in the pouring rain (except on laundry days), getting packages (or letters), and last but not least blog comments. So please comment! Madasi! :p 

A Day in the Life Of: (A Medley of Days, Rather.)

How much more I appreciate teachers since I've been one.

My day really begins the night before when Jamie asks, "Lizziey, what time do you want up in the morning?"

"5 am"

"Lizziey, what time do you actually want me to wake you up."

"6:50 am"

True to the conversation, my first alarms rings at 5 am.  I get up at some point and turn the water heater on. Jamie eventually finds some way to drag me out of bed by 7. Yesterday she did it by starting a pilates work out. Yes, the idea of working out in the morning makes me excited to get out of bed. I don't really understand it either.

I then take a warm bucket shower and get dressed for my day. Getting dressed is way easier here than at home because I really only have 5 outfits to choose from. By Friday, getting dressed takes no time at all.

I grab some hot water and mix in my Starbucks' Via packet. I thought I could wean myself off of coffee here in Ghana. Instead I find myself coveting my mom's weekly packages of caffeinated goodness. My body officially thinks caffeine is a food group.

I glug down my coffee. This saddens me frequently as I feel like this is a drink that should be savored...but there is no time for savoring coffee. I rush up to the computer room, print out whatever I need for the day, and hurry off to school.

What goes on at school?

Well today I went to morning assembly. This is the time when our students say their prayers and sing the national anthem amongst other tunes.  My kids actually march back to their classes. It's pretty cool. After assembly I graded some papers, fixed the jam in the copier, and headed to the dining hall.

When I was little (this may sound weird, but I was a weird kid. Let's face it. ) I used to put on my sister's cool roller skates, and skate around the kitchen cooking "strongonof" or rice and cream of mushroom soup. I used to pretend  that I lived in an orphanage and that my mixture of soup and rice was all I would have to eat for the day. Now I have absolutely no idea why I used to play out this scenerio in my head because I was a very fat child with lots of American food to eat.  Nevertheless, I had some notion about how great it must be to live in an orphanage and eat only rice and soup while riding around on roller skates.

So today while I was scooping (sans roller skates) 40 cups of goopy, sticky, somewhat chocolaty porridge, I was taken back to my childhood memory. I smiled as I realized that being in Africa really has been a lifelong dream. It was a reassuring thought that even hot porridge could remind me that this is an opportunity of a lifetime. Then I spilled some on my hand and it burnt me. Oops.

After breakfast, I went to teach 2nd grade. 2nd grade frustrates me a lot because they are never ever on time. That's not true. They are rarely on time. But today they were definitely NOT on time.  Long story short, I ended up taking just a few of my 2nd graders into the computer lab while the others finished up their math homework.

Teaching 2nd graders to double click is harder than it sounds.  Teaching 2nd graders who do not have computers at home how to double click is harder than it sounds.  Teaching special needs students who do not have computers at home how to double click is harder than it sounds. Doing it all at once is.....totally achievable.

R is my favorite kid. I shouldn't have favorites but I do. He is slower than the rest.  Today it took him longer than anyone to finally master double clicking.  I had helped R several times and then went on my "rounds" helping another student.  Almost as soon as I had turned away to move on, R finally figured out how to double click an icon and open it on the computer screen. He jumped up and yelled, "HURRAY! MADAM LIZZIEY I DID IT! I DID IT! I DOUBLE CLICKED!"

I have never been more proud of someone in my life.  All of the other students came over and gave him high 5's. In the middle of a very hectic, frustrating, culturally different day, I was so excited to see R achieve this skill. I was even more excited to see him so ecstatic.

I'm not sure where God is taking me down the special needs path, but I have the feeling that the work I am doing here not just with R, but with others, is leading me somewhere. We shall see.

After R's cheer of excitement it was time to teach English to 4th grade.  My 4th graders cannot keep their mouths closed and stay in their seats. I love them, but my punishment currently is giving them tons of homework and making them do jumping jacks. The jumping jacks I can handle. While I am excited that my 4th graders now know how to use a comma, I am sad that I will be grading papers all night tomorrow. So goes life.

I ate lunch, organized some books in the library, and taught a final period to 4th grade. Then Jamie and I stayed after school to help a few students with their homework. This is so my favorite time of the day. Sure, I can kick out any kid who isn't serious about his or her homework, but I feel that this is my time of building relationships with the kids. It's fun figuring out our homework TOGETHER (because let's face it I had no idea what a pepper is called in Twi [mako] and I didn't really remember how to write the year 1978 in French [mille neuf cent soixante dix huit]) So together we learn. I like this.


After library Jamie and I come back to the house and eat dinner. Lately we've taken up running and pilates followed by a shower, lesson plans, and talking about all sorts of things. I really couldn't handle being here without her. :)

So that's a peek into our life. Every day is so completely different mind you.  It's so exciting to know that today will be an entirely new set of experiences. And if today doesn't suit you, it will change tomorrow. My Ghanaian adventure is teaching me to hang in, hold on, and enjoy the ride.