Goodnight friends and family,

How are things going i cant believe it is time for another update already!! Time really flies down here....it is already the 8th week coming up and time for thanks giving break this Friday. So what is the weather like up there? It is still hot as usual it's hard for me to get into the festive spirit because all the signs tell me differently. Although one thing that is changing is that the all saints' trees (as the Grenadians call them) is blooming yellow so it looks a little like fall when you look out over the valley and hills. So ya i'm a little bit jealous of you guys thinking of snow and then snowboarding and such. It really gets to me that at home my board is sitting in my closet nicely waxed and i am not there to take full advantage of that this winter. But that is ok i will just brag up the beach this winter to you guys :) Well i guess i will start my usual ritual of going through my week day by day. I think to my self when i do this....you guys have got to hate reading every stinkin thing i do..but then i think to myself....i am so gonna love my self years later when i want to read back and remember days gone by...so i guess the truth be told i am more doing it for my self then for you...so in other words don't feel bad if you skip all i write and just look at all my pictures..which prolly gets old for you all as well.... ;p 

     Monday: the norm...school, Shavoni over for in the evening...

    Tuesday: school, for art we made little books and then decorated them...they loved it since pretty much all of my students love doing anything with paper. Kids club...(which went a LOT better...although there was some behavior things going on but i think i should expects that as the norm)

 so here is kind of an interesting story on our way down to bible club something suddenly came crashing down from a tree up on the hillside and came to rest a lil way up the road..and on further inspection found it to be a nice little coconut. So Amanda kicked it of to the side of the road and we decided to see if it was still there when we came back and if so we would haul it on home. well it was... but cracking it became rather and interesting show of wills and it took many a hard hurdle against the cement step to get it cracked a little so that we could pry it open..(since or brave machete was rather on the (really) dull side) let me tell you fresh coconut is def. the way to go. It is SOOO good!!

 

     Wednesday: school, and then in the evening we had a kids night at church since it is children's month. I had invited two of my kids from school to come and one of them showed up so that was cool.(besides two of my kids who come to church there already) Its kinda funny i had told her about it and told her she should come but she was like write a note Miss my mom wouldn't believe me..so i did and she was all exited and couldn't wait to see if she could come and then that evening her mom and her show up and her mom is like whats this thing about? You got Renel all exited!! And then the next day at school Renel told me she loved it...so that was cool. We had done a lot of singing and then bible base ball and then after that a story and snack. The kids were actually pretty good with getting the answers right in bible base ball i was pretty impressed! And then i got mine wrong...."how many rivers flowed out of the garden of Eden?" 

     Thursday: Well that morning i was informed that Darrell was going to be late and when he finally did come it was half way through devotion time. And as the day progressed i noticed that he was really quite so i inquired about it one time while he was waiting for me to score his work. and he didn't say anything besides shrug his shoulders so i kinda let it rest. Well next time he was up to score there were tears in his eyes so i asked again and he didn't want to talk, but i didn't just want to ignore this so i kept asking and then finally asked it he wanted to go some were else to talk about it but no he didn't want to do that...but by this time snot and tears were all over the place so i told him that we should go to the bathroom and clean up so of we went and after he cleaned up i tried inquiring again and asking him if anything happened at home or that evening or on the way to school but he wouldn't talk so i was kinda getting worried but then he finally said he had a head ache but then when i asked again he said he didn't. by this time we had been out of the class room long enough and i was at my wits end so i asked if pills would help and he said it would so i went down and asked miss Eberly for pills and asked her if she new of anything that was going on that would cause this torrential downpour but she knew nothing so i went back up and gave him the pill which he then refused. Soon there after it was brake time so i went to Mr. Horst to see if there was a reason for him being late to school and thus maybe find out the cause of his weeping. I there learned that his mom was thinking of pulling him from school because she was tiered of always fighting with this other mom who sends her boy to school. And who is very boisterous in his playing as well as Darrell which makes for fights and such which then go home as probable far fetched story's to there mothers who then go about remedying and dealing with it by fighting in their turn with one another. Which is very sad. Anyway Ryan then went and talked with Darrell and after that he seemed to do much better..i don't know what they talked about but it seemed to set Darrell's mind at ease. Ryan did tell me though that Darrell said something to the effect that his head hurt because he was thinking to much about what had been going on. So my conclusion was, that he was worrying about changing schools. Well at school Rebekah got sick and i couldn't get a hold of her mother so she had to lay around on our hard benches almost all day. I felt really bad for her. It was kinda nice though that she had gotten pretty much all of her work done before she went down though. that evening Amanda made an amazing meal and as tradition has it we had Lori and Sarah over for supper and the evening.

      Friday: Goodness the day to remember or more like forget....! So to start off, Fridays are one heck tick day of trying to get a whole days worth of work done as well as bible memory done all in a half a day and since its games class the rest of the day that puts the kids in a feverish pitch of excitement as well...so that is a normal hair brain Friday but that was not to be this Friday......no indeed. so we start of the day with a science self check (yes we forgot to do our bible memory) and as i make my rounds around to the desks to see how things are progressing i catch one of my students who clearly knows better looking back in her book to find and answer to a question she forgot...so i question her and she admits to the charges places before her...and then comes the moment of decision for me..yes i shouldn't have to ponder on the punishment but i have never had to come to this point with any of my kids yet, and of all kids it has to be one of my few kids who is growing up in a Christian home and clearly know what she is doing is wrong...so i do what i know needs to be done and haul her of to the 'spanking room' and let her know what is about to take place and double check to make sure she knows why this is going to take place and then i tell her to wait while i march down to Miss Eberly's room for assistants. Thankfully she consents to doing the not-at-all fun job. So ok breath that is over lets get back to class after we clean up and move on with the day as normally as we can....but wait! What is this Darrell and Rebekah are grinning at each other from there desks and is that a paper i just saw being slipped to the other? groan i have told the class that note passing is not to be done. Well i will question them and if proven guilty i will give them a mark and we will move on with the lesson learned..right? Umm no, guess again. 'So... Darrell did you pass a note to Rebekah?' disbelief and hurt  flash through his eyes with the effects of an mouth dropping open to finish the look of incidence but wait i know this lovable kid to well. That is his tactic he uses to get out of everything... more questioning...with the shake of the head and a pert no as the response....(i'm sure i saw that paper being passed) out loud... so what were you smiling at each other for then? shrug of shoulders....so if i were to ask Rebekah about this would she say the same thing? Shrug of shoulders again...So i call Rebekah up and question her as well and she acknowledges the passing of a note right away. OK so now what. Darrell is still somewhat maintaining the Ora of innocence so i ask that the note be brought to me..so Rebekah goes away and fetches it from Darrell's desk and brings it up to me. Scrawled across a slip of paper is written 'do you like me more then David' and it looks like a few more names to but not sure.... oh goodness 2nd grade politics mixed up in this as well. Well now i have a lie to deal with. And not wanting to sentience Darrell in front of Rebekah i tell them to go put marks beside their names and then go sit down. Well i soon come around and find Rebekah weeping at her desk and further inquiry finds that she was given the note but that she gave it back but did not reply so finding her guiltless and feeling bad for judging her without looking deeper into her side of the story i remedied this predicament with telling her i will erase her mark and not count it which cheered her up considerably....Well its break time and time to deal with this lying so Darrell gets brought in and sat down on the bench that all kids know is not a good place to be sent because it normally means a talking to by a teacher. So we discuss what happened again and i make sure he knows what i am accusing him of and he acknowledges his wrong before i once more march down to Miss. Eberly's room for assistance. but break time is almost done so we decide to do it once we have our classes started again and the poor errant boy has to sit quietly on the not-a-good-place-to-be bench for a while longer in wait of his punishment.So finally when the moment came he was rather subdued after sitting and pondering his past conduct and his imminent punishment. So anyway that was a really wild stressful day...let me tell you i never knew how emotionally and physically draining that is!!!! (by the way we did remember to do bible memory then at the end of the day)

my sunshine boy who has the cute's, cheesiest smile! totally cheered me up! Cyle getting a drink after games class.

That evening we had Jr, youth night so we all piled into the truck and lumber down to the beach with around 8 or 9 loud rambunctious kids ranging from 8 to 12. among the tribe was Rashod, who was brought in among us as it being his birthday the day before which made him take 8 as they call it down here. It totally made his day! In fact earlier that day as we were heading up the road to eat supper at Pastor Johns we passed him all dressed up and here he was ready to go even then! We played jump the river and football with them.. which was a lot of fun! although we hadn't made any official notice at the beginning about refraining from sea bathing so only half of the number helped with football. Then we had a story and snacks to rap up the evening ... 

 my shower drain and my feet. i was wet from the hips down and sand everywhere!!!

 our amazing fruit bowl!!! bananas, mango's, oranges, and sugar apples

     Saturday: We all got up nice and early for a Sat. morning and went down to Pastor Johns were we all piled into the bus and went around the country side and picked up church member lady's and then went gallivanting around the country with Pastor John as our guide which was awesome since he has lived here for year and years...Anyway one thing that happened was when we were going up a steep hill, half way up we just could not get up the rest of the way so we half rolled half slid down the hill were we all 17 ladies and baby clambered out and trudged up the hill while the bus sauntered merrily up the hill in victory were then we all clambered back in! Anyway here are some pic. of the day.....(brace yourself there is a lot of pics.)

 we went to a petting zoo. it was also a nice secluded resort.

 different kinds of fruit and such like jazz..Natalie is rubbing of on me you wouldn't have heard me say jazz before ;)

 finally stepped onto a nice yard....it was so nice!

 armadillos

Wilma holding one. She is holding its tail to keep it from squirming around.

 Jalane holding and feeding the monkey Ginger.

 our guide

 thought this was pretty funny

 Amanda holding a hamster

 a snake and i actually petted it!

possums taking a nap in there pen

 Miss Rose and Miss Rachelle

 sail boat...

 house mates: Natalie,Amanda,me

 LaBorie girls school teachers: Lori, Natalie, Amanda, me and Sarah in front

 a old building that we stopped at to eat lunch. i had fun imagining this as a school. thought this will do nicely!

 ladies around the van

 we took a tour of a Chinese run green house. it is a non-profit organization that helps struggling farms in Grenada.

 as this pic. was downloading i was thinking how 3 kinds of people are represented here...Miss Rose..Grenadian, Pastor John...white, our tour guide...Chinese

 my first time trying guava it was pretty good

 Patstor John with pugg as he called her..this was a very interesting beach it had very fine black sand

 breading grounds for mosquitoes

a very stinky place called mangrove ya i don't remember much about it but its a swamp were they grow stuff in...and it stinks to high heavens. 

 my meal that evening it was amazing! pasta with shrimp, mussels, and oysters

     Sunday: we had a very good church serves with the theme still on children and a very good message by Kendall Fox on children as well. I was very blessed to be at church today it is really hard to come away from church here and be depressed let me tell you! :) that afternoon Amanda who is the cook this past week invited Miss Abigail and her children over for lunch and then for the afternoon until the afternoon activates..Miss Abigail is Rebekah mother..Rebekah has two brothers Shane and Andrew. We also had two tween girls over for lunch who were at church. Anyway then in the afternoon we went up close to the fort and sang at a poor house and then went up to the fort to watch the sunset. and i finally got some exploring done as well!

 three little cheese balls wanting there pictures taken! Rebekah Fox, Chisti High, and Josh Fox.

 you will see some stellar sunset up here!

 watching the sunset and watching this cloud dump rain. its rather neat this same cloud had shaded us this afternoon while we were singing out side. That evening we youth brought whatever from our house and combined a pizza at our house and had fun playing games well kinda of.. two of the kids here came by and were kinda crying because there older brother not much older then them was beating them up. Natalie then was talking to him and she said that he kinda had a weird look in his eye and he asked if they were scared of him and Natalie asked him if they had a reason to be and he kinda shrugged his shoulders and said ya..so the two stayed at our house for a while because there mother was gone and wasn't getting back till late. Its so sad what you see here sometimes...

One more thing...its a prayer request..me and Lori were just talking today and we realized that our 90 days of grace are almost up and we still do not have our work permits!! so that is not cool so i am asking you to pray hard that Lori and I could get our work permits in time!! Thank-you in advance!!

~Sincerely Crystal

dear friends and family,

How is everything going for everyone. We are enjoying nice hot weather especially today! But we all also talk about fall, pumpkins, apple picking and everything that goes along with fall and such and kinda wish for that a little. But that's OK the beach was awesome today. Friday afternoon the guys left for a annual camping trip so today at the beach all the lady's and the children were with us at the beach so as you can imagine that was a rather festive time! :) It was fun to kinda have our beach trip changed up a little. Another interesting thing that happens at the beach that day ( because i am now writing this on Sunday) was watching some fisher men cast there net and then pull it in. The kids stood around and watched and i have to admit we ended up standing around rather fascinated looking like tourist. and then the kids could no longer contain them selves so they ended up trying to helping the fisher men pull the nets then. I don't know how the fishermen liked that but they didn't seem to mind to much... here are some pictures of it all happening we got to see then catch a starfish which they gave to one of the Fox boys to keep and an octopus, fish and lots of sea eggs...we didn't stay till they were done so i don't know if they caught a lot of fish or not then.

       Monday i woke up to an amazing view out of the kitchen window. So that was an awesome way to start my Monday.

 This week was my turn to lead all the school chapels so Monday i had to lead a few songs and introduce the speaker which was Pastor John.The day went well and we enjoyed having Shavoni over for the evening!

     Tuesday i came to school to find a rose on my desk by my sweet little student Renel. She can be such a charmer always bringing miss a rose and giving me hugs but on the playground now and then you hear of things going on. She also had been coming to church a few Sundays but now she has kinda quit and i keep asking her if she is coming but so far she hasn't come again.

Tuesdays we also have art class so today i tried an art project that i had done a year ago at art in the park in York. It went pretty good i thought.....its were you mix paint, soap and water and then blow bubbles till they are up over the top of you cup and then you stick your paper on top and get the imprint of the paint bubbles....

So anyway than after school me and Amanda walked down to Hope Dale for kids club which this month is my turn to lead out and do it. So that was kinda interesting being on that side of it. It is hard to keep there attention and then if you forget that you normally sing first things don't go to well ether then. But oh well hopefully this Tuesday it will go better.

      Wednesday I had to do the whole chapel for school that morning so that was kinda interesting. i had thought that what i had prepared was to long but when i presented it it was shorter then i thought and so i had to dismiss early so that was kinda embarrassing but other then that it went pretty good. That afternoon we went to Grand Anse for groceries. And then that evening we went to a elderly lady's place for cottage meetings.

      Thursday at school as far as i can remember was pretty much a hum drum day but then that evening we went to Sarah and Lori's place for supper and then they had girls bible study at their place because it was Sarah's turn to teach. She had a really good devotional about not prioritizing your time. She then got Ryan to buss us all down to the beach to watch the moon which had been full moon the night before so it was nice and big!! it was a lot of fun walking down the deserted beach at night and learning to know the girls better..

 ok so finally a pic of Shavoni for all of you who want to put a face to the name. (she always comes over on Mondays for bible study with Amanda) And she has been talking about it but finally today in church she stood up and said publicly that she would like to be baptizes and become a member!!!!! So that was REALLY exiting! I would ask all of you to pray for her. She faces a lot in her life..she is in collage and it can be a challenge and her family can be hard to get along with. But through it all she finds something to be grateful for with her family or she rises to the challenges in collage. And now another big thing to pray for is that Satin would not get a hold of her and discourage her in the decision that she is making.

 Natalie with pretty much all of the girls somewhere in the pic.

 pretty much full moon and lights of Grenada

        Friday was a wild day of leading sing along devotions (which was fun) and then working hard with my students to get done with our work till lunch time, since we only have a half day of work on Fridays because of cleaning and games class. And let me tell you i was very proud of my students they got a LOT of work done. And let me while i'm on a roll say that my kids are amazing so on Friday at second brake several of them decided they wanted to stay in a clean the class room so i let them go ahead i was outside for brake and so when i came back in things were looking pretty spiffy! So then after lunch when it was time to do cleaning there was very little to do so i told my students that they could sit quietly on there chairs and read a book..well some of them decide to get their Reading books and have a reading class it was so cute and it wasn't disturbing so i let them go right a head and do it. it was kinda funny cuz i overheard some of them conduction it like i would in actual reading class and i hear Mr. Doodlebuger mentioned for those who know that story. :) just as background we read this story a few weeks ago and my kids LOVED it!!! Actually i think i can attribute this story for making reading our story in Reading start being a fun time for my class. It actually started with my boy who struggles the most with reading, (score i love when this happens!!) he started reading the part if Mr. Doodlebuger in a deep voice and did very well at it and made every one laugh including teacher. And so since then exceptionally when they or my self point out some fun way to read the story they have a ball reading the stories and actually groan when i say i'm going to read the rest of the story!!! By the way i know that Reading time is time for them to learn how to read but because of our tight schedule and because Reading always has us read it twice i always make  them read half of it and then i read half of it and then the next time i read the half they read and they read the half i read.

 their little reading class (L to R Darrell, Cyle, and Renel)

 Nella above and Leadon below looking at books...

       Then me and Amanda had games class we played a game with all to student and then we split them up younger ones on one side of he court and older ones on the other side of the court so that the younger ones would have more fun and there was less of a chance of them accidentally getting pushed over. I took the younger classes and played red light, green light with them. That evening as i said earlier the guys left for brother camp so we single girls decided to do some of our own special thing and go out to eat at a higher class resort restaurant. We had a lot of fun that night walking around and looking at the big yacht,taking pics. and having some nice girl time, and unwind from the week..well i guess that's what we did. Since teaching is our life right now it was the topic of lot of the night but it is always nice to compare notes and i love getting tips and advise from them since they taught before and i haven't. so here is some more pics.

Natalie and me cheesing it up!:) 

 blurry but love it anyway :)

 my supper ya i took some of it home....:P btw that is a mango drink i have there and it was really good. but then i like pretty much anything mango :)

Ok well that covers Friday and i talked about Saturday so i guess we will move on to Sunday. Well i got to church for prayer meeting so that was a good thing :P Believe me after last Sunday i have 9:20 in graven in my mind! Kavona and her children came to church again so that was exiting!!! And then the whole thing with Shavoni made my day! And then Natalie made an amazing lunch of salad with chicken and bread sticks. We were all ready for salad because for the last week we did not have salad because the store had been out of lettuce the beginning of this week...this afternoon i was in my room doing my update when i hear out side "miss! miss!" so i go out to see who it is and there is Rashad! If you don't know who he is he is a 7 year old boy who is always liming around i don't think normally anyone is home and his mom doesn't normally cook cuz he is always asking us for food, sweeties, or our football (which we don't have with us anymore cuz he went and lost it or something..) anyway he had a football (not ours) and told me i needed more coaching in football (he has tried teaching me tricks with the football normally it ends up him trying to show me something new and him messing up :P) so i played around with him for a while but the ball kept going in the drain and getting all muddy so we gave up on that and sat on our steps and ate cookies and juice and played uno....i had asked him when he asked me if i had food for him if his mother was home or why he didn't go home and he said his mom and siblings were gone. and then i asked him 'so were does that leave Rashad?" and he said 'by you!' its sad what lot of the kids normal is here. 

 my coach Rashad scrubbing his ball trying to get all the mud and grass off of it...

   This evening then us teacher wanted to do something so we and Shivoni went around and sung to some older lady's..it was a ball let me tell you! old lady's are sooo funny!!! And one old lady i guess was so confused that when we asked her if she had any songs she wanted sung she picked a Christmas song!! she must have thought time was flying faster then she thought and it was Christmas time...i mean why else would people come sing for her?? and at Miss. Jeans we got to see a really pretty sunset! not a very good pic but anyway.. we then went back to the guys house for the rest of the evening..we brought a pizza and they made pancakes and apple filling to put on it so we had a very interesting but scrumptious snack or rather dinner i guess..

Oh by the way praise the Lord this week Leadon (if you read my earlier post you may remember me talking about him) actually got exited about two different things this weeks and talked to me more then just answering my questions!!!so that was awesome!! cuz he has prolly only did that once or twice before the who rest of the time. Also pray for me that i would be able to love him more and not get frustrated when he acts out or spaces ALL the time in class...I heard different things this week that convicted me that i have failed to consistently show him love in all circumstances...once in teacher chapel and an other time from a house mate who said.."students who are loved at home come to school to learn, but students who do not get love at home come to school to get love" and one way they try to get that is testing you and seeing if you will follow through with what you said as far as punishment and doing it in love. because when they act up at home they get punishment but not in love....I'm not saying that this child has a bad family life i honestly don't know(i would love to know) i hope not but knowing how most family's operate around here there is a high possibility that he doesn't have an ideal home life. any way i have rambled enough so i guess i'll go. Love Crystal