A great ending to a tough week !

This past week was an unusually tough week for me.  There are just some weeks that everything here seems harder and there really doesn't have to be a reason.  This week was just one of those weeks.  I was feeling far away from family, the students seemed out of sorts, all the work that I needed to do wasn't getting done, and so much more just seemed to be hitting me. 

Then Friday came and that morning I prayed that whatever had come over me this week would just be gone.

My day started out with this wonderful group of 6th students.

 

On Monday I gave this class a team-building activity that they struggled through for 2 1/2 class periods.  They tried, failed, talked, screamed, argued, tried, failed and talked some more.  Then they walked into class on Friday, sat down in a circle, talked one at a time, listened to each others ideas, and tried the activity again AND THEY SUCCEEDED.  They burst in to shouts of joy and ran around hugging each other. It was so fun to see all of them smiling and excited that they had accomplished the task.  It made me smile and thank God that I have the awesome privilege to teach these kids.  It also helped begin to lift my spirits :) 

 

This was just one of the things that mad me smile that day, but really the only one I got a picture of.

 

 

It also helped that I then had an amazing weekend with friends.  Here are just a few pictures!

Celebrating with my friend Lauren on her birthday.  It was
a fun relaxing day with friends on an island about a 20 minute
boat ride away from where I live.

Steve and Jenn's boy Gavin with a starfish.
One of the kids that calls me Aunt Rose here :)

Yes this is a birthday cake, but look a little closer.
What do you see oh yeah just a bug crawling around
on our cake, so what do you do after it crawls all over your cake
you take it off and act like it was never there. YUM!

 

 

And then Sunday morning 5:00a.m. some of my friends and I participated in a relay triathlon, at that time in the morning we were not convinced it was a good idea, but after it was all finished we decided it was fun

Before it all began, me, Lauren, Danielle, Winston,
Ali, and Abby.

We had two teams of three!  Lauren and Abby
were the two brave ones who tackled the 750m
open water swim.

And their off....

Danielle on her leg of the race...
20k bike ride

Winston riding for the other team.

And I am off for my 5K run

Ali running in the rain

Finishing with a run across the beach.

My team...Danielle, Abby, and I

All of us after the race... thanks to Christine for
making the signs and taking the pictures.  It
takes true friends like Christine and Jenn to get up
at 5:00 just to come cheer us on!

The HOPAC group.  The 3 guys in the back did the sprint
distance relay on their own.  The two directly behind me
are students at HOPAC and the one on the end is a past
HOPAC teacher, who still lives in DAR with his wife,
and works full-time for Young Life.