Math Students Want MORE...What???

    This morning, I woke up realizing that it was Tuesday.  Exactly one week from today, we will be waking up much earlier to finish packing, quickly clean this room we have been staying in and then head out early to make the long trek back to the United States.   The kids and I cannot believe that 4 weeks have flown by this quickly!  This is the first year ever that we have stayed at Emmanuel beyond 4 weeks (we will have been here FIVE), and yet it barely seems like we have been here 1-2 weeks, and this is exactly why we know that God has put us in the right place.  So I reminded Kaylyn and Jaden that each "day" would be their last full day here doing His work.  Today is our last full Tuesday at Emmanuel for this year.  Tomorrow will be our last full Wednesday here, and so on and so forth.  Appreciate it, make the best of it, and treasure it in your heart.

   I headed down to breakfast with Jaden and he got to enjoy arroz con leche.  More days than not, this is the breakfast he eats and it is his favorite.  I also like arroz con leche, but have been replacing breakfast with my "proffee" (vanilla bean flavored protein powder mixed in with my coffee) so that I could get more protein during the day that I would otherwise get.  I tried to pack enough protein powder for this trip, but am getting down to the end of the huge container, so we will see whether the powder makes it all the way or whether I fall short a few days.

Headed off to school!

   My math classes began right away with the school day at 7am this morning.  First I with the 9th graders, working on systems of equations word problems that I had created.  I had the students get into groups and they solved the word problems with a study team strategy called "Hot Potato".  This is where each student has a different colored writing utensil.  They each write their name at the top (so I know who has which color), and then each complete a step to the problem until it is solved.  When they solve a problem and it is correct, they turn in that problem and receive the next.  There were 5 problems.  This is the first time they have been allowed to work in groups in a math class, so it was a new concept to them, but they caught on and when our hour and 20min were up, and the 5 problems were not yet solved, they begged to go into the next hour and 20min class because the teacher for that class was not in school today (so they would have otherwise had study hall).  Because I had to be in the 10th grade class during that time and I could not be in 2 classes at once, I asked Profe Jorge (who is normally their math teacher) if he could be with the 9th graders and the answer key to each problem.  He agreed and the students ended up doing math, AT THEIR REQUEST, for 2 hours and 40min!!!

Hot Potato activity I created...by hand

   So I headed to the 10th grade class and taught them their last new lesson, graphs of logarithmic functions.  I will still teach them on Monday, but we will be reviewing all function graphs they have learned so far: parabolas, rational expressions, absolute value, greatest integer, exponential, and logarithmic.  There will be more information on how that goes on Monday when I teach them for the last time.

   Kaylyn was in the Chosa with the toddlers, even though she is now sick for the 4th time this trip.  That makes once a week a norm for her, and I'm hoping that doesn't continue into the school year.  This time around, it is just congestion issues and a sore throat (no fever), so we gave her a decongestant and nasal spray and she headed to the Chosa.  I think she is not drinking as much water as she should be, but she seems to think differently about that.

   Jaden spent time in the horse barn today, got to put the trailer on Chino's gator, helped rearrange 2 rooms of the medium boys house so that they could clean well, collected chicken eggs in the afternoon and then hung out with the medium boys before coming to supper.  He has been healthy this entire trip so far, which I am very thankful for.

   When the toddlers were napping, I used that time to prepare my 9th grade lesson for tomorrow, which will be my last for the 9th graders since their next class isn't until next week Tuesday and that is the day we head out early.  They are beginning their geometry unit, so I am pretty excited about that!  I will have more information on that tomorrow.

   When we walked into the Comedor for supper, we saw that Gibran and Cristofer shaved their heads bald!  There were 2 other boys in the big boys house that did that as well.  Gibran told me that he didn't care for the hair cut he got yesterday, and just decided to cut it all off.  The boys have to have their hair a certain length, and no longer than that as part of their school dress code.  Students dress codes are non-negotiable.  They boys wear either tshirts or button down shirts, khaki pants and a belt.  The girls wear dresses or skirts and they MUST come down to the knees or they are not allowed to be in school.  They wear tshirts, and long socks with black dress shoes.  It is nice having Elvia in charge of the school as acting principal because in years past, the girls have tried rolling up their skirts or unbottoning their shirts to questionable levels.  Elvia has grown up here, then went to college for her degrees and come back to work and live here.  She knows what's been "tried" in the past.

   After supper, we read for half an hour before I got online and read a message from my sister that my godmother, aunt Jeannie, had passed away in the middle of the night.  The funeral will be on Monday, yet we do not get back until Wednesday, so I will be missing that but my thoughts will be there.  I specifically remember my mom saying before I left that if something like this happened with a family member, I should not cut my trip short.  My dad always taught me family comes first and I remember how he would run errands for my aunt when she needed him to whether it be getting groceries or a prescription or whatever, or take her to appointments (she didn't drive), or invite her to our family events, or fix things that had broken in her apartment.  Jeannie never married and she didn't have children, so as she got older and things got more difficult for her...dad took on quite a bit of that responsibility.  After he passed away, then her other siblings took on more of what they already were doing for her.

   Later, when we were about to take showers, a big storm came through and the power went out.  It was out for a bit, so we finally decided to just call it a night (since it was super dark outside and in our room) and shower in the morning before heading out for the day.