Jenn's Journalings

MS Banquet – Frozen theme

Our annual middle school banquet had a Frozen theme this year. It was fun!

The evening began with each middle school boy finding a girl (classmate or teacher) and standing behind her chair. The boy was supposed to ensure that the glass of the girl he stood behind was full all evening. I’m glad our boys had an opportunity to be gentlemen.

We played a song game and the winning table was allowed to line up for dinner first. A line from a song showed on the screen and you would raise your hand if you knew the song. Then someone from your table had to sing part of the song. Since I helped choose song lines I didn’t guess the songs, but I helped sing one or two. My table ended up winning, but we didn’t cheat. 🙂

Dinner was wonderful! Some of our parents helped make the pasta (white or red sauce), salad, and bread.

After dinner it was time for the ice cream eating contest. I did not participate in this game, although it was fun to watch. Some teachers participated.

One of the dads was our speaker. He did a fantastic job weaving a powerful message together with some themes from the movie.

It was neat to see how God is continuing to work in the lives of our kids as the themes of the message related to what the kids have been learning since OE. In the early part of the message he challenged each of us to consider what areas we need to work on in our lives.

The key point that he ended with compared that in the movie an act of true love was needed to thaw a frozen heart and that Jesus’ death was the act of true love needed to thaw hearts frozen by sin.

I am so thankful for the dear friends and students with whom God has blessed me!

Flora (& Fauna)

Back in March we had our quarter break. I went up to Eden Nature Park for 3 days with friends. (I’ve posted about going there with my parents and friends in the past.) I didn’t take a ton of pictures, but I thought I would share the few that I did take.

The resort is beautiful. It’s up the mountain so it’s cooler.

The butterfly garden is a fun place to visit.

The pool is up pretty high. The fog was rolling in while I was there with the kids.

As you can see it became quite foggy.

And of course everyone’s favorite sign from Eden.

People have actually been seeing cobras around my apartment building and at school lately. I don’t know why this is happening all of a sudden but the sign seems fitting – especially right now!

Bahay Kubo

I decided to look up the meaning of bahay kubo online. Here’s what I found:

“The Bahay Kubo or Nipa Hut, is a type of stilt house indigenous to most of the lowland cultures of the Philippines. It often serves as an icon of broader Filipino culture, or, more specifically, Filipino rural culture.”

We have a few bahay kubos around campus. The kids sit in them before class sometimes. A couple months ago the roofs were being redone on the huts around campus. I have one just outside my classroom. Here are a few pictures of the process.

If you look closely you can see the hand of the guy inside who was putting the leaves up.

Here’s the finished product before they put the netting over the top.

Grade 7 Play

We studied folktales a few months ago and had a short Cinderella study as part of it. The kids worked in groups to read Cinderella stories from various cultures. Our textbook has a contemporary version that uses dinosaurs as characters and lots of alliteration on the letter “d” – it’s called “Dinorella.”

The kids made dinosaur masks and we acted out the play for the elementary classes. Here are a few pictures.

: The three sisters. (One of the boys volunteered to be Dinorella, so we let him play that part.)

: The sisters made Dinorella do all of the work.

: Dinorella had to cook and clean instead of go to the dance.

: Fairydactyl came to the rescue…

: …and transformed Dinorella.

: Dinorella headed off to the dance.

: A small dinosaur attacked the duke.

: Dinorella comes to the rescue as the crowd looks on.

: Dinorella threw dirt balls at the problem-causing dinosaur.

: The other ladies at the party try to claim the prize for saving the duke.

: But he finds Dinorella.

: Off go Dinorella and the duke.

: Here’s the class.

: And of course the wacky picture.

OE- Friday

Friday was time to go home to Davao. We got up in the morning and helped pack up the Taal site. We took the floating restaurant boat back.

: We had a great week!

: By the end the kids were pretty tired.

There we piled into a jeepney. I got to fulfill something I’ve hoped to do for a long time – ride on the back of a jeepney. I didn’t get a picture, but I’m so glad I had the opportunity! 🙂

This picture shows a guy on the back of a jeepney, so that you can get an idea of what I was doing. We weren’t in the city though.

On our bus ride to the airport one of our boys felt really sick. We were concerned that it might be appendicitis. We had trouble getting in touch with his parents. We told the kids what was happening and took time to pray for his healing. It was amazing to see God work. Our student started feeling better within 10 minutes. We made sure he took it easy for a while (including when we first got to the airport), but he was fine in about an hour.