Pool Day: where's waldo

Nov 1st we all went to a pool complex in Santa Cruz. In reality, a lot of kids were missing because parents realize that it's pretty dangerous with lack of supervision, so it's not actually the whole school. We went to the Blooming complex, which is the training facility for a futbol team here (called Blooming). Beautiful beautiful soccer fields. And 4 pools. We left school at 8ish, arrived by 10. The bigger pools weren't open for a while so a bunch of high schoolers and teachers went to play soccer on the field that we were allowed to touch. Not as nice! But still good to play on. After a good game all the pools were opened, and so the rest of the day was spent in or around the water.

One thing that was terrifying, and it should be... no supervision. 100ish kids, and yes there were teachers and parents, but no one was assigned an area to watch, nor did anyone really watch carefully. No lifeguards. No pool rules like NO RUNNING (the first one I can remember learning). But no one got hurt, other than scrapes and normal things! So that's good.

We are a Mennonite based school, even if there's tons of Spanish/other descent coming to the school, so we are ultra conservative. No bathing suits, no tank tops, no topless men. Sports jerseys and shorts were the wardrobe of the day. It works out quite well.

We stayed the pool til about 5, and then tried to leave. Our not very experienced bus driver managed to drive through a sand pit while turning around, so it took another hour or so to get out of there. Let me just say.. people don't have very much experience with getting stuck, or with getting out. Nancy and I told stories as we were waiting, of winters and icy roads and blizzards and deep snow. Kind of relatable!

 Bus ride in

 Pailon, where I live, used to only be accessible by that train bridge. Going to Santa Cruz, the only city nearby, would take 6 hours potentially. Recently they've built a highway bridge, so now it only takes 1.5 hours ish.

 Here's a game, like where's waldo. How many adults do you see?

Found some! Alas, they are facing inwards and can't actually see the pool.

Oh another thing, you can get a glimpse of the mix of cultures, we have more traditional Mennonite women, some less tradiional, and some kids.. all dressed very differently. 

 Me, Whit and Nancy. We're so busy posing for pictures we can't supervise.

Actually the purpose of this photo was to show off our swimming attire! 

 The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round..

We had a mix of clouds and sunshine, so not straight beams the entire day. The few days after this, every kid had bloodshot eyes, red/peeling faces (the ENTIRE face peeling, I've never seen that before), or they just didn't come to school! It was a long day, but a lot of fun playing with kids outside of the classroom!

Musikj Owent/Noche de Musica

I and a good (and musical) friend, Whitney, hosted a music night on October 28. My first reason for wanting to do this was to showcase the the new skills of the students, as a sort of piano/guitar recital. And then it grew a bit (I'm not actually sure why or how it happened), we added a few songs by a volunteer high school choir. This was volunteer only in the sense that they didn't HAVE to come to the music night. They all learned the songs in school, in music class, but only 17 or so came out for the night. (Which I was happy about, it could have been 3!) After that, I thought.. let's have a worship time! My thinking was that God gives us our abilities, he gives us our brains so that we can learn, therefore we are praising him unconsciously when we play an instrument or climb a mountain or play futbol. Doing what HE made our bodies to do. So why not end off the evening with intentional and conscious worship and thanksgiving to him?

So the evening was piano and guitar, handing out certificates, choir time, and some worship. AND most importantly, some friends baked some cookies and I hired a local lady to bake 400 more, so we had a free cookie bar all evening long! It was delicious.

Over the course of the year, I had quite a few private music students. 16 piano students and 10 guitar students, when I actually add them up. Some stayed all the way through, some quit after a few months, some just started a couple months ago. Most are at a beginner level. This has been... not really outreach, in terms of direct witnessing or anything, but it has been a really good time. A way to encourage, teach them a little bit, and hopefully show them a little bit of love. I also had to do a lot of learning myself, as I didn't really know anything substantial about guitar before coming here, now I know a LITTLE bit. It definitely has been really good for building relationships here, and for them and myself to practice perseverance. It also has opened up my eyes and shown me how terrible a piano student I must have been - sorry!!

For the music night, I had no idea what to expect. No one's had a piano recital here before. There's been a couple worship nights, but the people who led them are gone and no one has tried since. I was hoping the parents of my kids would come, but also hoping that people of some local communities would attend. We had it in the sanctuary of the Villa Nueva Church, but I really wanted more of a coffeehouse feel instead of straight pews. So... do we set for 50? or 400? We really had no idea.

In the end, Whit and I moved the very heavy benches all to the sides, creating a semi circle, and set up 10 tables in the middle. So table space was about 80 people, overflow/benches could be a few hundred if needed. Turns out, it was perfect. It was a great relaxed atmosphere, the tables were mostly full and the benches were nicely full. I have no idea how many people really came, I would guess around 200 hundred but I actually don't know. But it was a perfect feel of not empty, and not crammed in full.

Posters were posted:

Thank you to a million people for editing these! I struggled.

Now onto the actual evening.

 Setup and practice before

 Just the beginning of the cookies!

 A grade 12 student kindly translated for me

 The youngest student, in grade 4, starting off the recital part.

 I tried to teach both classical music (with staves and notes) and also contemporary stuff with just chords. A few students chose to play a worship song, with just the chords, for the recital. For these pieces, Whitney and/or I sang along so that the song made sense!

 The students waiting to perform

 With the guitar students, I played along as well, just to help them out.

 Certificates

 Grade 8 to 12 students, VOLUNTEERS only

 Worship time at the end. Whitney recruited her husband (on the drums) and some other local people who often sing in worship teams at church.

And that was the evening!! It was crazy, really. So many moving parts, and I was involved in every single part, plus managing everything. It was stressful beforehand, but the evening itself was more than I could ever have wished for, it was oh so smooth and amazing.

- Thank you to all the students for practicing and learning so much this year, and for being brave and playing in front of all those people:)
- Thank you to Whitney, David and Nancy for helping set up, baking cookies, taking pictures, managing the food, filling in for random music parts, writing in the certificates, cleaning up afterwards, and all the other ways you helped! So appreciative!
- And THANK YOU to God, who loves to gives us gifts such as music. What a rich life we live

~ to God be the glory ~