Written: July 10, 2005
Wow. The end of the semester. I never would have thought it could have come this quick. Now, before we even knew what hit us, summer camps have jumped out from behind a bush and attacked us with full furry.
Camps are both a good and a bad thing. There good in that they allow us a lot of time with the children. We get to know the kids on our teams very well and have alot of time to share with them. It's a bad thing in that it's extremely tiring and we have to pack to leave for the States while in the middle of camps.
Right now the Kinmen team has only five members present. Meagan and Christine are in Kaoshung (sp?), Shawn is in Nantou and Ginger (lucky
girl) is already in the States. I'm really missing my roommate Shawn...it's gonna be real lonely next year having no roommate. BJ, Shawn and Christine will not be here next year...which means that we won't be able to teach Jr. High either. I'm pretty bumbed about not having my same students next semester, but I guess I'll live.
Can you say rambling? I think I covered about five paragraphs of stuff in the last three paragraphs...and I'm supposedly here to teach English.
We have 5 TA's with us, plus our friend Douglas, who is kinda a TA-in-training. The really cool thing is that two of them are Christians.
One was saved only a couple months ago. He had communinion for the first time on Sunday at our church. He's really excited about his new faith.
He is the TA helping me with my team: every day at lunch he has all the kids thank God for their food before we eat. It really is encouraging to be working with a brother who has so much excitment for God.
Dude, going from teaching Jr. High to teaching 3rd graders is something else. After we finished testing on Monday I had to totally throw out my plan for the week: I just wasn't prepared for the lower English level. Classroom control is a whole different story as well. In Jr. High I was always fighting to make the kids stay awake and talk...with these younger kids I'm fighting to make them shut up and calm down.
We just finished our first camp yesterday. Now we have Saturday and Sunday to rest and then it's back to the salt mine on Monday. Today I'm going to try and get packed as much as I can, because we finish this next camp on Friday afternoon and then I leave Kinmen (and don't come back until September) on Saturday morning. I'm really super glad I am coming back, or this week would be extremely stressful. I feel sorry for poor BJ: she's leaving next Saturday and not coming back!
A couple prayer requests: Pray for energy and creativity as we do camps. Pray for our TA's, esp. those who are not saved. Pray for cool weather (esp next Thrusday!) Pray for BJ, shawn and Christine, our three team member who will not be coming back in September. And pray that the school will turn our internet back on. I know it might not seem like a big deal, but it's become an extremely big hassle with no internet.
So, from the Kinmen team: bye bye! See you next school year!
Samuel Bavido
