Your Hands Are Cold.Dario Marianelli

Cutest/Funniest Part of my week...so I got to school Wednesday, and Cristina did not have a lesson plan ready for the morning. La letra K was the new letter of the week, and if you know Spanish, you would know that you are super limited when it comes to teaching children different words to help remember the letter K. She gave me koala and karate, hmm not so helpful when coming up with something in a matter of minutes. With a bit of help from Ashley, I told Cristina that the kids could do some karate moves during carpet time, and then I would do the lesson of my name where Profe Kendall was written at the top of a sheet of paper. I would go over individually with each student that my name starts with la letra K, and after a few times of repeating that, they would have to draw a picture of me. Cristina had me read Dora during carpet time, which I once again butchered and was not ready for at all, and then she asked me to teach them karate. Sometimes I think she thinks I am tricking her and know more Spanish than I say I do...trust me on this one, I have no tricks up my sleeves. I laughed inside having no idea what the heck I was going to say. I pointed to la letra K, asked what it was, then said, "La letra K es para karate." Complex, eh? Right then and there, I started doing karate moves and tried to get them to do the moves also. They looked at me like I was crazy. I would punch and kick and say the sound for K at the same time. Finally, Cristina said something to them, and they followed along. They loved it! Yes you are right. This was the cute part. Now the funny part comes with the lesson of drawing a picture of me. Modeling is important for teaching so I did my own drawing of myself to show them (btw my example of my name looks pretty shabby in the pic above. I of course made theirs cuter). Ok the modeling thing was to try to make you all think I know what I am talking about. Really, I drew it so they would not look at me weird when I tried to explain in Spanish what to do. I go through the first table, and apparently I wear no clothes, have huge hair, or have really stick-like long fingers :). Next, Ambiorix comes and sits by me. Everything is going great, well until he is done drawing the basic stick figure of me. Usually, I would have to tell them, "Yo necesito un camisa, pantalones, y zapatos." Before I could even say that, Ambiorix reaches over to my drawn picture and decides to add two details to it as you can see from the pic up above. If you were wondering why I put up such an inappropriate picture on my blog, well now you know why. He immediately looked at me and gave me that cute lil Ambiorix smile that he always gives. I felt like I was Will Ferrell in the movie Anchorman: "I'm not even mad." I started laughing along with him, and then told him to put his paper in his bucket. Awesome.

Best Part of my week...I went to Chichigua like usual Wednesday afternoon with Katy and two people who are visiting the DR. As we were walking them around Chigs, one of the boys from our Bible school on Fridays walked by. I remembered his name from Robin and Cara, but I had never talked to him before. I do not know where the urge came from, but I looked at him and said, "Tu nombre es Ernesto, si?" Ernesto smiled, said yes, and like an embarrassed junior high boy naturally ran away. Now, fast forward past Thursday and Friday during the day. I got really sick those two days so I was kinda down in the dumps...haha no pun intended. I am so mature, and I bet attractive now too. Anyways, we all went to dinner Friday, and when Robin got there, she took a silver ring off her finger and gave it to me. She said it was made by Ernesto! Yesica gave it to Robin to give to me because he was too embarrassed. Let me back it up to say, these rings are no ordinary rings. The boys in Chichigua make them for fun, and they are sold nowhere. They at first used pesos to make them then decided to use pipe metal instead. After they get the metal into a ring, they put star-like designs on it. I have been wanting one for a long time, but since I did not know any of the boys or ever attempt to talk to them, this was not possible. Not only did getting the ring completely make up for the awful past two days, but it reminded me how important our relationships are with these children.

Most interesting Part of my week...Saturday we went to a seminar in Santiago about Islam. It had my attention the whole time, and I learned some pretty crazy facts about the religion, such as:
*Muslims pray five times a day, which most know, but what you probably did not know is if they miss one of those five prayers, they are already sentenced to 40,000 years in Hell.
*Muslims believe in the Trinity: God, Mary, and Jesus. God had relations with Mary, and then Mary had Jesus.
*A majority of Muslims have not even read the Koran/Qu'ran.
*Only 5% of Muslims are extremists that either support or are terrorists.
*Most say that Islam is the fastest growing religion, but that is true only because of family growth. Christianity is the fastest growing by conversion.
...hope you enjoy the facts! The speaker was a man from Closed Door Ministries and was one of the most legit missionaries I have ever seen/heard.

Side note for the blog...I had a dream last night that I was waiting at Burger House for my meal when all of a sudden Michael Jordan walked by and started talking to me. I would like to challenge you all to beat that dream. I do not think it is possible!
ps. I will be visiting home in 4 weeks! kinda crazy to think about.