Can I get a 1-2-3?

Or even an Uno- Dos- Tres would be good for now.

I've started school. Actually, I'm three weeks well into school. I thought I was pretty prepared for teaching little kids after nannying the Flanagan boys for 4 years, but in ways that I couldn't have anticipated, this job is difficult.

I did anticipate the following in this job:

• kids crying the first few days
• teaching them how to wash their hands, stand in a line, and other basic necessities
  
• throwing rocks on the playground
• needing to put kids in time out
  
• throw up
• snot

I did not anticipate:

• needing to tackle kids bolting for the door
• that speaking English to the kids would still get no response after three weeks
  
• that I would not be teaching them English so much as taking a crash refresher course in Spanish
• laughing every day at their preciousness
  
• being utterly exhausted every day of the week by 11:30
• poop
• yes, I said poop. One of the kids brought me a fecal sample of their very own on the playground with the words, "teacher, I need to go to the bathroom, see?"

It is a very good job but it is tiring. I have regained about 1/2 of my Spanish, still only speaking in present tense with an occasional fue, fuiste, fuimos or fueron (it's the past tense for "go"- it means "i/we went"). While I'm glad to be speaking Spanish again, my goal here is to teach them English- which is very hard for now. see the following: I get no response to "stop throwing the blocks!" and get an immediate response to "no lanze los bloques!" and since I'm a thinking being, I do not want to continue to do those things which provide me with no results. Therefore I've been learning a lot of Spanish rather than teaching much English.


Theres not a whole lot more to say about school. It's fun. Every day I have another funny story to tell my roommates when I get home. Every day they hug me. They're terribly cute and I like them all, even the defiant ones.


Here are some pictures for you:

mi casa con las bouganvillas.


These two plants belonged to Justin's grandad. I inherited them when he passed in June and nursed them back to health.

Una parte del jardin! Here all you can see are sweet potatoes, squash, tomatoes, but there is much much more.


CHICKENS!!
the two in the middle here are Grushenka and Old Warsaw


here we have Mr. Boltitude and Gingo


I love Old Warsaw's feathers



This is actually my roommate. Kris Hiew. Yes it is.
don't laugh too hard- he got $20/hr for this



This past weekend was spectacular. It was a huge Waco reunion as Ethan Durelle played their last show together. 8 years as a band and you'll know a lot of great people.
These are from the show at CG:

I have the WACO sign in this one. mucho gusto




The amazing Reeve Hunter.
L-I-V-E in the H-E-B

And there's Ellie, on stage with her best friends. The pinacle of this experience for me was watching her singing at the top of her lungs "I'm not worthy of this life."

Oh yeah, after the show- around 2am, roughly 40 people came over to hang out. Enough stayed the night to fill every room other than the kitchen and bathroom. We had 20 in the house when I woke up the next day. good grief.


All in all it was a poignant and triumphant close to the 8 years of music. I was glad to be a part of the final day. I love my family here.

Things are pretty much the same here:

always changing. But oh, there is nothing new under the sun!

Ellie and I dug, tilled, mixed, smoothed, and planted a garden at the new house. Thus far, baby tomato, pepper and cauliflower transplants thrive with many brothers and sisters soon to join them.

I retreat to the swing on the farm today reading from Wendell Berry's Sabbath Poems. The beloved cottonwood above me now blocks out most of my view of the sky with her recent spring plumage-- green buds ripen to bring a shower of feathery cotton in attempt to continue her kind after her death.

The ewes crowd to the mangers;
Their bellies widen, sag;
their udders tighten. Now
The little voices cry
In morning cold. And now
the garden must be worked,
Laid off in rows, the seed
Of life to come brought down
Into the dark to rest,
Abide a while alone,
And rise. Soon, soon again
the cropland must be plowed,
For the year's promise now
Answers the year's desire,
Its hunger and its hope.
This goes against the time
When food is bought, not grown.

When I am still and quiet enough, the patterns of life emerge. Continuous cyclical change characterizes the course of all created things. What is new will be old, what is born will die and take its Sabbath rest in the earth. Where there is death and decay, even destruction at the hand of us beasts, new life will come. All things die in ways large and small, actual and metaphoric. All things pass. This is sure and trustworthy. Am I to fear this inevitable passing? Surely the answer is no! This is great reason to rejoice and hope! All things come to pass, and all things pass to come.

Don't you see? Here we glimpse the future. That of which we have read, of which we hope, long, and for which we know we were made-- the anticipated, impending, glorious future, the Kingdom which is just beyond the horizon, is also at hand. At hand in these metaphors of God’s creation. All for which we wait is coming, is certain... is here.

Bring it to life- live it into existence.

The bud swells,
Opens, makes seed, falls, is well,
Being becoming what it is:
Miracle and parable
Exceeding thought, because it is

Immeasurable; the understander
Encloses the understanding, thus
Darkens the light. We can stand under
No ray that is not diminished by us.

The mind that comes to rest is tended
In ways that it cannot intend:
Is borne, preserved, and comprehended
By what it cannot comprehend.

Your Sabbath, Lord, thus keeps us by
Your will, not ours. And it is fit
Our only choice should be to die
Into that rest, or out of it.

Shabbat Shalom