Wednesday, half way through the week already! wow...

This update was inspired by different events that occurred from Sunday till now. I will start by letting you all know that the board game was a great success. Here is a picture of what it looks like at the top of my entry. All the kids love anything where they can compete, throw dice, spin something, etc. Today, they all asked me if we could play again. I am going to create more games since this one was such a big hit. The next thing I should let you all know this that I made cookies last night, with a toaster oven. YES, friends and family it is possible. They taste normal, they are actually softer than they would normally be. I took the cookies to work today, and everyone liked them. Even the delivery man who brought us dinner took one. When he brought me my food, he saw the bag of cookies and the biggest smile broke out on his face. I gave him a cookie, and he left with a smile on his face. The man brings us dinner every night, and I hardly ever see him smile, so that was nice. The third thing I wanted to mention, is that I always buy food from this corner store near my school. You know that you go to a place a lot when the store cashier notices that your hair is different. Today, I did my hair curly again because it was raining outside, and the cashier says, "Oh, you have different hair style." I say, "yes." Then he says, "Well it looks nice." Hahaha, I think I win one of the awards for most loyal customer.  My fourth item of discussion, is one of my students. Her English name is Alisha. She is my most advanced speaking student. I look forward to class with her every week, because all we do is speak English for 45 minutes straight. Since she is so stressed with everything academic in her life, I always ask her what she wants to talk about. Her day begins at 9am with school and the schooling doesn't end until 10:30pm. This girl is burnt out! Last week, she wrote my co-worker, Chloe, a journal entry about her schedule. Through the broken grammar, you could hear her anger, her exhaustion, and her plea for a break. She is only 11 years old. Her journal entry ended something like this, "My God, don't you think it's about time someone gave me a break!" As I was reading her journal entry today, I almost broke into tears. I wanted to take her away from all of it, and let her know that she is worth so much more than what she achieves in school. I am thinking of ways to make my class with her a safe place where she can talk openly, and rest at the same time. I want to meet her parents and tell them that they are crazy! I will only do the first thing mentioned, since the latter is not possible. I want to tell her that there is someone who does not expect her to be perfect, who knows it is not possible and because it is not He took on all her mistakes. He defeated them all, now, through Him, she can have perfect peace, worth, and meaning. That is the end of my soapbox, for today at least. 

I think I am getting sick as well. I will spare you all the gory details except to say that my head is kind of stopped up, and my throat has a tickle in it. Pray that it goes away soon, that it stops at this and does not get worse. It was hard enough being in one of my classes today, standing for 45 minutes when I felt so weak. I try not to let the kids know, they would just take advantage of the situation, at least that is what they did when Chloe lost her voice. She is still sick too, so pray for her as well. It comes in waves, for example, right now, I feel fine, but, in an hour, it might be feeling really weak.