My kids crack me up. This past week has been an interesting story. My kids have noticed that beanie babies have hearts that have a story, a name, and a birthday. My kids have learned all about responsibility. All of our beanie babies have lost their tags. The kids are sad because now we don't know all of the beanie babies names or birthdays. We only have 8 of the tags and they love to check them out randomly.

So on Monday it was Slippery the seals birthday. The kids wanted me to bring in cake so instead of that I brought them all a mini pez. :-). They were super excited!

Then today, Thursday was Sr. Squirrel's birthday. This was the first beanie baby that I brought to the classroom. I made the kids cupcakes last night and they were super excited. No one could belive that I made them myself. Today we sang happy brithday to him and I recorded it, I hope you can hear it. :-) Also today, one of my kids brought in a present for the beanie baby. THey brought some little plastic soccer balls, a mini rocking horse, and perfume so they don't sink. It cracked me up.
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Goodbye again Iowa...

I'm sitting in the airport in Des Moines just waiting for my plane and to fly to Huston and then to Torreon! I am hoping that when we get home we will have heat and warm water, some of my friends (other teachers) who are down their already don't have any! It could be very chilly and by that I of course mean 50 degrees :-) I can't wait to not freeze with layers on! I am also very excited to get into my classroom and but together some of the things I'm bringing back and to just prepare for this second half of the year! Plus, I need to do all my grades before Thursday! Yikes :-). My principal told me the day before we were flying home that grades would be do the Thursday we're back for teaching.....oops. that could have been useful to have earlier :-). Oh well! I hope that you all have a wonderful week! I will try and be better at blogging this month :-)
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Just a little bit of Christmas...

I hope and pray that you all had a wonderful Christmas and a very happy New Year :-). That you are all doing well and aren't freezing in this winter! I hope that this year is full of many blessings for each one of you and that you are surrounded with love from those around you :-)











home for Christmas. How wonderful to be back with family and friends. To get to go to church, travel throughout Iowa visiting friends and family. Thanks for all of you who came to me and who came to the New Years Eve Party, grandma & grandpa for coming and playing lots of cards! Aunt Sharon for letting us crash Christmas at the farm, for friends who met me for lunch, shopping, dinner, baking cookies, making almond bark pretzel, booking trips for spring break, drinking hot chocolate, eatting chineese, it was a WONDERFUL two weeks at home to which I tell you all thanks!!! Andrea and Phil thanks for spending so much time with us and letting me hang out with the kids lots and for playing games.....yes- even clue :-) I miss you all already and am looking forward to seeing you all again in July!! :-)






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Star Student updates




One thing that I do each week is have a "star student" my kids all know their week and have been invited to bring a mom or dad or family member or friend into the classroom and teach us how to do something or share with us about soemthing different. For example, someones mom came in and made cookies with us.







Another mom taught us how to make ghosts at halloween. Someone taught us how to make bead ornaments for our christmas trees.



The friday before coming home someone taught us how to write letters to Santa and then to tie them to helium balloons and let them reach Santa. My kids loved this! Since writing is a little difficult for us we had to draw some pictures and just "sound it out". Then his mom had made his favorite cookies and his dad did magic tricks for us to learn about :-) It was an interesting experience and awesome to be a part of something that is the "normal" for these kiddos.

This has been super fun for me to get to know the kids as well as for the kids to be proud of their families and those that love them :-). It helps me to know where the kids are coming from and the things that make each one of them special and unique and I think that they appreciate that a lot.. IT has been good lessons in respect and gratitude (we always make thank you books for the parents...) It also lets us experience fun things in our classroom on Fridays.


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The Friday before Christmas break our kids participated in a Christmas Pasada. Basically, this means that my kids loved having a Christmas party for the afternoon. For this party we walked around our kinder area where we stay and sang for the pasada (in Spanish) asking if we could come inside and join the party basically. The party consisted of 3 pinatas, tons of cake, bags of candy, watching movies (thanks for sending them to me Tammy), and playing outside! I also gave my kids their Christmas presents which were just little bags with candy, stickers, coloring page, and a baby ornament for a tree :-) My kids were so generous and sweet to me. I got some awesome Christmas presents from them as well! One of my favorite was chick flicks from one of my sweet boys. They are in both Spanish and English which is exciting because it will help me out later when I'm back in the states!
This video is the song my kids sing for each child as they have a turn to thit the pinata and about how you "do it do it do it (and then it ends with) oh time's up"
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Teacher Christmas Pasada

Thursday the 16th or 17th we had our teacher pasada at school. They catered in some amazing food from our favorite restaurant, however they didn't have vampiros our favorite food! We were told this would last for about 2 hours, but in the end it lasted for 4 hours! THe school hired a clown (i have no idea why....) to entertain us and he did some funny things, but generally speaking he was just obnoxious!
This party made me really sad! I noticed a couple of the cleaning ladies standing around and then didn't see them later on...Perla, one of the aids, and my friend came up to me and asked me to help get Stella some food (my cleaning lady...) Because there wasn't a chair for them they went back to work. No one noticed they were missing or did anything about it! And when we did tell a principal and the woman in charge of us, they just tried to make the ladies feel stupid. If there had been 3 teachers waiting around for chairs we would have gotten one immediately, but it just shows me really how much they are disrespected and belittled. It was really sad. I told my roommates at home that night and they felt really bad too.
Also that night we ended our secret santa and got to give them our "big gifts" which mine just got a coffee mug filled with choclate and these really cute 3-d snowflakes that my mom had sent me in a package :-) She was really excited about it which was wonderful!
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Christmas Party



The Sunday before flying home we had a dressy Christmas party at Casa E- our neighbors. It was fun to be able to relax with each other and dress up. The girls all wore dresses and the guys had on suits or dress pants and nice shirts. It was our goodbye to a lot of our friends until we came back! People made appetizers and just hung out. We had the party both inside and outside which was fun. I love Christmas parties outside, that never happens in Mexico! :-) Here are some pics of my friends. Sadly I can't tag them all and let you visualize who is who but know that these are most of our friends!




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Socccer



My roommate Katie had a championship game and they won! Interesting fact- the team they played against had some Colegio Ingles kids on it (15 yr olds) and Katie's team had up to 30 year olds. After that game we went to our friend David's game. His game is at thsi giant fake ship caled "la marina" where they play basicaly rec soccer. He ended up playing two games instead of one one and then after that was our friends Paco and Juan Carlos' game. The best part was being able to get suntanned in almost December! It's fun to watch soccer in a country where soccer is loved and respected!
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