weirdest things make you miss people...

So, sometimes the weirdest things trigger rather intense feelings of homesick "i miss so-and-so".

For example:

• We have a(nother) new roommate (bringing the total population of our three-bedroom apartment to FIVE women for the next five weeks). This new roommate has a MAC notebook (laptop, for those of you not Mac literate.) It's white, just like Dana's old one. It "breathes", just like Dana's old one. Seeing it sitting around the apartment makes me very very homesick for Dana.
• At school three days a week we have after school beginning gymnastic classes. Just walking past the room where the class is held and seeing the little girls doing all the same exercises (just in Spanish) as another little girl used to do them makes me very very homesick for Holly. How's life going in teenager land?
• Every year there's a huge garage sale that the missionary population of Lima has- as different families come and go. Last year we got some great things for very cheap. This year I was thrilled to find (squeamish males look away) boxes and boxes and boxes of the exact kind of feminine hygiene product i need- and each box for only ONE SOL!!!! (That's about 30 cents, folks... when a little 8 pack of OB down here costs 13 soles... these boxes of 24 and 40 were going for ONE SOL!!!!) It was a gift from the Tampon Fairy- and made me miss two very dear cousins... I won't embarrass them by naming names. :)
• The same new roommie previously mentioned also brought dvds of the Anne of Green Gables movies, and we watched the first movie over the weekend. It's been awhile since i've seen them, and it made me miss my one-time kindred spirit. I hope she's doing well with her husband and (hopefully still alive) brain-damaged cat. Mwaouw.
• Same roommie is from the Warsaw IN area (yeah small world) and mentioned tonight at dinner that she had gone up to see Chicago at the Elkhart County Fair... and that just made me homesick for Indiana long summer days and for everyone i've ever gone to the Fair with...
  

Just funny what little things can cause a spontaneous mental (or real) tear to spring to the eye. Love you all!

Happening in Third Grade...

I had to say goodbye to one of my students last Friday- his family is moving to Canada! I really and truly will miss him- I loved his attitude and smile and sense of humor and work. We had a big ole party for him at the end of the day, which we'd planned for all week (mothers involved and everything) and STILL managed to keep a secret from Patrick! It was so much fun. We had a cake, and one of the mothers took last year's class picture, photoshopped me into it with his second grade teacher, and got it framed with a mat that we could all sign. All the kids had made cards or letters at home for him and brought them in and then we took a picture of all of us in the classroom. And then we prayed for him. I started, and told the kids that if they wanted to say a short prayer for him, to raise their hands and I'd say their name. About six kids did that, including one boy that is new this year and not from a believing background, but had become good friends with Patrick. It was so beautiful to be able to do that, to encourage them to pray for each other, and to hear Patrick say "It doesn't matter where we are, God is still with us."

It's been one week without him, and we said several times every day "I miss Patrick".

The only good thing about it is that now i have 16 students, which (unlike 17) CAN be evenly divided into rows, or work groups, etc. *grin*

This week in third grade we are learning about classifying animals, how to divide words into syllables, adding -ing to words, all about the trials of Job, and we are starting a new grammar chapter (yeah action verbs!). The verb chapter has baseball as its theme and so a lot of the sentences use baseball words and verbs. That's great for the USofA, but here in Peru- well, i spend as much time explaining the game of baseball and the vocab in the practice pages as I do explaining the actual lesson! *grin* I wish I had one of those World Series dvd things from when the White Sox won... we could watch it as a Grammar movie!