Long Overdue and Waiting!

Well we are getting close to the 3 week mark and still no blog! AAAAHH!!!! :O

We just finished our mid-term break and today classes began once more. Technically we have been on break since last Friday. We didn’t have classes on Wednesday because of some major flooding; on Thursday only two thirds of the students for every class could make it to school. So I guess I have had some time to write, but somehow I haven’t gotten around to it… Also, even though there wasn’t school we still had A LOT of work to do. Namely grading, which in it of itself isn’t very bad, but still quite time consuming (as I’ve mentioned in previous blog posts). So thank you for being so patient with us!

Th break has been really good! Somehow Lizziey and I managed to make it to Accra on Sunday morning. We stayed at her cousin’s house, which was fully equipped with internet, air conditioning and a 11 to 12 ft. deep swimming pool. Let me just say that the pool is a VERY big deal for me. I love to swim, and I especially love the feeling of being underwater! This pool is perfect for both. It is long enough for me to just barely make it from one side to the other in just one breath, and it is deep enough to require depressurizing your ears. Yeap, I was in pool heaven! I swam until my fingers got all prunny and wrinkled, and then I lounged by the pool to dry off. While I was drying, and let’s face it partially tanning, I listened to some Latin pop favorites. That’s when IT happened… for the briefest moment, I felt like I was back home (in Puerto Rico)! Even with my eyes opened, everything around me was familiar looking. Then a salsa song started to play, and I was overcome with the urge to dance. I dance a few steps and pretty soon I’ve managed to get Lizziey to join in. We danced until the end of the song and then made our way back inside the apartment.By this time it was around 1:30 (9:30 a.m. back home) and I managed to video Skype with my mom. I was also able to watch the live stream of church service, which was super nice. I really miss my church family and can’t wait to be back home with them!

On Monday we took an array of taxis and tro-tro’s to get back to Kasoa. A tro-tro, by the way, works something like a bus. In reality, it’s a van that crams in 20-25 people, not unlike the public “guaguas” in Puerto Rico. You pay considerably less than a taxi (1 GH cedis vs 20 GH cedis), and can hop on or off at different unmarked places. I think we will try to find out if there is a tro-tro that goes from “Circle” (it’s a huge round-about in Accra, with shops and other stuff near it) to the Accra Mall, since its 6 cedis for a taxi to the mall and another 6 cedis to Lizziey’s cousin’s house. Yes, there is a mall… sort of. It reminds me of the Montehiedras Mall back home, although it is much smaller. Everything is super expensive… at least for us it is. I guess in actuality it is not much different from back home, but we don’t have a lot of money to spend on frivolous whims. Most of our money is spent on transportation and phone credits. Were trying to see if we could take a tro-tro from circle to the Accra mall, which would save us lots of money. We figure that the Accra mall is probably central enough to have a tro-tro stop. Then again, we could be completely wrong about that assumption…

Anyways, we made it back to Kasoa in good time, managing to avoid the 4-hour long evening traffic. We were happy to be back home. J On Tuesday the candidates and sisters went to a nearby beach. Lizziey and I decided it would be better for us to stay home and rest. I feel a little bad because I’m not very big on the whole going out thing, I like to just stay home. Should I be making a more conscious effort to go out and explore?... However, we used the time to be productive. We hand-washed our laundry, graded mid-term exams, cleaned our room, and worked on lesson plans, all things that we needed to get done before Wednesday.

Classes were back in session on Wednesday, and we pretty much had a regular rest of the week. The kids were a little harder to work with than usual because they had just been on break. Each day brought it’s own challenges and rewards. Often, the same kids that exasperate me inside the classroom are the ones who make me smile the most outside it. Every morning I am greeted by an array of “Madam Jamie!” shouts, waves and hugs. As soon as I walk into a classroom, whether I am teaching or not, kids get up and greet me with “Good morning/afternoon Madame Jamie!”. There is also the period right after snack, when I am usually in the B3 classroom waiting for them to arrive. The B1 and B2 kids pass by, on their way to their own classrooms, and as soon as they spot me they excitedly wave and call me “Madam Jamie, Madam Jamie, good morning!”. I look up from my notes to smile and wave, then I urge them to keep walking to their classrooms. I love my crazy kids. They are squirmy, loud, impatient and full of boundless energy. It would be so much easier and fun to just play with them all day, to skip the learning and the discipline. I love them too much to do that though, because I know that they need to learn what I am trying to teach them. So I use everything I have in trying to get them to learn, even when I know they won’t like it, even when I think they might like me less for it.

Maybe that is how God feels about us. He takes us through the hard path, so that we may learn, because He loves us so much. He is asking us to be still, pay attention and wait for His help. When I go around the classroom helping kids on things, they all want me to help them at the same time. I am just one, so I often say they need to be patient, that I am coming around to help everyone but I need them to be still. Granted, God does not need us to wait because He is too busy somewhere else, but He does want us to learn to listen so we can follow instructions and pay attention to Him. He wants us to learn to be patient, to trust that He will come around to explain at the right time. Sometimes we go through rough situations because of our own foolishness; we did not follow instructions or pay attention. Other times it is because it is the only way that He can teach us what we need to learn. The only way He can shape us into who He has planned for us to become.

I know I am here for a reason. I have always known He sent me here with a purpose. I do not know the full purpose, but I can trust that He will reveal it to me in due time. In the meantime I will continue to learn and to teach. Just knowing that I am here for that (leaning and teaching) is more than enough for me. I have already learned so much more than I could’ve imagined, and I know that there is still a lot more to come.

God bless,

~Jamie