Looking back

10 months ago I knew I wanted to be a student missionary...but I didn't know where I was going. Then 2 weeks before the island SMs flew to Hawaii last August I was accepted to teach 6th grade in Majuro. Little did I know what was ahead of me! But I was ready for anything. And now almost 300 days and one school year later, here I am about to leave in less than one week!

I've experienced a new culture, close living quarters with a bunch of other random college students, camping trips both good and bad, dealt with a challenging principal, hot weather, few resources, power outages, no water, wearing skirts ALL the time, expensive food, expensive internet, a small paycheck, bucket of rust van for transportation, cockroaches, etc. and the list goes on. And in one week when I'm back in America these memories of Majuro will gradually fade away. But what will stay with me forever is the relationships I have with the students here and the other SMs. I'll never forget sleeping to the ocean at night, laughing hysterically with my kids, all the dumb stuff we did as SMs that only we can understand, and the satisfaction of knowing that I've done the best I can here and God used that to touch people here in Majuro.

Sweet dreams

So this past week we've been practicing at the ECC (gym "downtown") for the Spring program. We sent notes home with the kids telling them to meet us there in the morning (otherwise we'd have to walk them all down there since we have no bus...and that is NOT fun!) So we practiced all morning which was tiring but successful. For some reason we were having classes after lunch and I was tired so I decided to lay down for a few minutes. Bad idea. I woke up with 15 minutes left and decided to set my alarm so I could sleep 5 more minutes. Well...it went off but I went back to sleep...and woke up 30 minutes late to class! I bolted out the door still groggy from the nap. Alise ran into me saying Mr. Grant was looking for me. That's just lovely I thought. Well I didn't see him, but I did discover he had let all my kids into the classroom WITHOUT me. That seemed sort of irresponsible to me, but my kids are great and actually cleaned in my absence. They asked where I was...some wondered if I had been crying (sleep marks on my face lol). I just told them I fell asleep. My kids don't really care. It took a few minutes to pull myself together. Later in the afternoon I gave them a pretty genius writing assignment: Please write one paragraph. "What would you do if your teacher overslept and didn't come to school?"