Internet here has been a little wonky lately... being one of my excuses for not writing lately. Anyways, I have all sorts of goody good news today!

1) Daddy's coming in TWO WEEKS!!!! And not only that, but get this. For the past 3 weeks my 8th graders have been doing a project where they have to make a Hot Air Balloon Tour through 3 African countries. They have to make a brochure with all of the geography-type information (since it's geography class...), prices, dates, etc. And today they presented them to the class, giving hilariously amazing sales pitches. All through the presentations I thought "Boy, an African Balloon ride would be spectacular!!!"... and then Daddy emailed me and told me we're going on one!!! WHOOOOP! :) So expect some incredible pictures in about 3 weeks... because there are sure to be many!

2) Today I was the Mystery Reader for the 2nd grade class here. For those of you who don't know, I did my student teaching last semester in 2nd grade and that age has stolen my heart. I didn't know how much I missed it until I was with them today - and it was by far the highlight of my week. I miss teaching elementary school, but as I came home and prayed about it (I was a little sad.. missing it and all), I thought about how thankful I am to have the opportunity to get to know these 7th and 8th graders, because they make every day away from elementary school completely worth it. So praise God that I'm content, even out of my element.

3) I've had some individual donations for gifts for Kenyan kids here, and today I talked with Bernice, my house worker, and we decided to buy the Little Lambs kids shoes and sweatshirts for Christmas! We have a shopping trip planned for after school gets out sometime, and I'm just really excited about it! And praise God that He's bringing provisions for this! If you could see some of the shoes these kids run around in... it's incredible.

I feel like there was more, but it's not coming to me at the moment.

School's wrapping up - I give exams on Monday and then Tuesday we're playing games (Settlers, Ticket to Ride, fun things that somewhat have some vague thing to do with geography.. ;) ) and then Wednesday is a half-day and then it's BREAK! Actually, we have an AIM conference here at RVA for the few days after school and then teacher in-service, but THEN break!!

Surely I'll have more exciting things soon, but for now I'll leave you with some pictures of the happenings since I've last blogged...

Carnival Night - it was the weekend after Halloween. All of the kids dressed up - some incredibly crazy - and they had games and decorations and all sorts of fun stuff going on in the gym.

Some of my 7th graders
Some of my 8th graders...
Then a couple weeks ago we had the jr. high soccer tournaments. RVA ended up with 3 teams - an A team, B team, and then the "ragtag" team that was put together minutes before the tourney since another team dropped out. The A and B teams both lost in shootouts in the semifinals, but I was proud of the boys!

One of the titches (elementary kids) played.. it was super cute to watch!

And then last weekend Cassie and Jenny got packages with some fall stuff in it - Jenny got the leaves, Cassie got the baking goods, so we decided to have a little Fall Party. Right now the weather here is like Texas' spring, but even prettier! The trees are nowhere near changing colors, so since we were missing the Fall look, this was way more fun than you'd expect :)

There we go! Happy Friday everyone :)