First Week of School

We have officially completed our first week of school!  Marcus and I are officially students in ABC Language school as well as all four children are now students at Rey de Reyes (King of Kings).

Marcus and I love our school, which is a Christian organization designed to teach missionaries spanish.  We have fellow students from Korea, Sweden, Germany, and of course several others from the US.  We have grammar class together with a man from Korea, then we separate and each have one on one conversation class.  Our teachers are very kind and encouraging, and we are thankful for the friendships we are making!

Sarah Caroline's school uniform (she says she looks like a waitress!)

The children did well this week starting their new school. This is probably the biggest adjustment they will have to make, and overall they have handled it really well.  The teachers are very kind and helpful to them, although they do not speak English.  There are a couple of teachers in the school who do speak English, and they have been kind to help our children adjust.  What a blessing to us that Sam can go with the others to school!  We thought he would need to go to a different preschool, and were praying about our different options.  There were some good schools, but the locations were going to be difficult with our schedule and where we live.  He is pretty overwhelmed by his class, but they are allowing him to stay with Luke until he gets a little more adjusted.  Luke has been a great big brother to take care of Sam, although he is ready for some independence!  The biggest difference for Ben and Sarah Caroline is that all handwriting is required to be in cursive!  Even in first grade the students write in beautiful cursive, and so at night we are practicing handwriting with the older two.  This is hard for now, but will be something we will be thankful for later.

Sam wears the "blue thing", or a "maudil" over his clothes to school (like Madeline).  Luke wears a "buzo" which is gym pants, t-shirt and jacket.  All children are required to wear these hats when they go outside.  We don't have a photo of Ben - he wears navy pants, a white dress shirt, a navy tie and red sweater.  On gym days he wears the same type outfit Luke has on.

We walk a lot each day to and from our schools, which is our only way to exercise right now.  We take a taxi to take the children to school, because it is a long uphill walk otherwise.  After we get them settled we walk to our school, about 10 min away.  After we finish school we have about an hour, and we work on our homework until time to get Luke and Sam at school.  We walk them home (downhill, so not too bad), which takes about 15 minutes.  After being home for about 30 minutes, Marcus walks back to the school to get Sarah Caroline and Ben.  We then have "lunch", or you could call it an early supper I guess??  It is tradition here to have the big meal of the day at lunchtime, so we just go ahead and eat then.  The kids take a small lunch to school, but they have that at about 10:30.  This is just one of the many adjustments to living in South America!  We all work on homework, handwriting, and maybe have time for playing in the park.

Sarah Caroline's new friend, Alli (her mom teaches at our school, and they are in the same class at Rey de Reyes)

This week the Lord has certainly watched out for us....  on Wednesday we had a gas explosion in our kitchen.  Our oven and stove is gas and a little on the old side, and sometimes doesn't light well.  I had gone to light the oven and when I went back later to check it, realized it had not lit.  When trying to check on it (obviously without thinking through that gas may have leaked), it made a huge explosion and blew out the kitchen window!!! Sarah Caroline was standing right there with me, and Ben was in the doorway.  Thankfully none of were hurt, and the glass from the window went all around in the kitchen but did not cut us at all.  I didn't realize until later that the hair was singed off of my arms, but no burns thankfully.  Marcus and I were pretty overwhelmed with thoughts of what could have been, and gratefulness that the Lord was watching over us.  Our window has already been replaced (at a price of only $30!), and the oven suffered no damage.

One big prayer request for this week is that we could find a Christian, trustworthy cab driver to take us to school in the mornings.  It is a safety issue to take any cab that comes along (there are certain companies that are considered safe).  We know we need a driver every morning, and we also would like to have someone to call when I need to run errands or if we all need to go somewhere further than walking distance.

More updates to come....