Things are going well here in Playa Samara. I finally feel like I broke the ice with my family last night. It´s a crazy week here. The oldest daughter is getting married this Saturday so there is family everywhere! Her fiance and his parents flew in last night from New Mexico and Indiana, for his parents it´s there first time here. What a trip. I´ve made some friends with some sweet, sweet Canadians...they are from Quebec, so we struggle along with their English (which is actually very good) and this 18 year old boy from California who has decided to adopt us as his crew despite the fact that we are öld ladies relatively speaking, and there are a million kids his age at the school. To each his own I guess. I am spending lots of time in the sun, at the beach, reading, practicing my Spanish, sweating always, and itching my mosquito bites. yep, I do that enough that that has actually become a hobby. unbelievable. My tico host mama does not speak English, which is good, but the adult children in the house all do, so it´s super nice to have a little bit of both worlds. Today I went for a run to another beach, where I was supposed to meet my tico brother for fishing...i never found him, but it was so very beautiful and worth the run. Apparently, I am going to the wedding rehearsal and rehearsal dinner Friday night, so that should be muy interesante! All is well here in Costa Rica! Can´t wait to get home and catch up with all of you though, and dry off!

much love,

E

Headed to Samara

Well, jeter just pulled away, and i am headed to playa samara in a few minutes for the second half of my costa rican adventure. As foreign travel usually goes...every day was fabulous. A little breakdown...

Day one - travel for an eternity, arrive in liberia, fumble around and amaze ourselves at the total and complete lack of transport aside from greedy taxis. Dumb our way to a bench where the two people in the whole airport are sitting that are going to the same place as us. Follow them to the hilton, and catch a shuttle to monte verde for 30 instead of 160 dollars. excellent.

Day 2 - get up, lounge, head to the rain forest for some tree top adventures, meet some fun israelis to hang with for the day and fly through the trees with. zipline face first, superman style across about 150 yards of rain forest. amazing. drop about 3-4 stories tarzan style before swinging back up...screaming like a 7 year old girl. That afternoon, we went on a coffee tour and learned all about how my liquid happiness is created from the ground up. eat fresh sugar cane. see some friends from the zip line tour at the coffee farm.

Day 3 - morning in monte verde rain forest, looked like a scene out of lord of the rings...so very beautiful and picture-esque. learn all about the forest and how intricate creation really is. head to the beach in the afternoon.

Day 4 - beach, all day, good times. drop dead gorgeous sunset, dinner and drinks on the beach as the sun goes down.

Day 5, hoy, morning coffee and walk on beach, say goodbye to jeter, heading right now for my first public transportation adventure. could be three hours as the schedule says, but more likely six. meeting my host family tonight, bombing my spanish placement test tomorrow, and im off and running.

can't really post my pics for some reason...but will throw them all together eventually!

pura vida amigos.

Elizabeth

New & Good

What a fabulous summer! I’ve been able to spend a lot of time in Nebraska with my family and the kiddos. Kelli came to play, and I made it back to Wilmington to see two friends get married and got to hang at the beach with Tom, Kalleen, and Ben for a few days. Sarah and Jonah came to play in the mountains last week, and while they were in town, my life exploded a bit. I looked over my list of 30 things I wanted to do this year, and three of the biggest are happening right now! Last week, I accepted a consulting position with a young educational company in Denver…which is down the street from my apartment! The business owner is letting me work with exactly the population of kiddos I love to work with. It’s my first step towards my goal of one day working on my own, I hope. Good stuff.

Also last week, I won a house! As most of you know, I’ve been going through an incredible HUD program called Good Neighbor Next Door looking for a house to purchase. I won the HUD lottery last week, and have begun the process of purchasing a house in the neighborhood near my school. The way the program works, is that I get the house for half the amount of the appraised price, and then am able to get an FHA loan to fix it up and pimp it out! Once I’m in the home for 3 ½ years, I’ll be able to sell it outright if I like and keep the profit! Or, I can continue to live there and have a mortgage that will be even cheaper than my current rent on my teeny tiny apartment.

The house is in a neighborhood that reminds me a bit of Wyandotte. It’s not Denver, it’s not the suburbs, but it’s really decent. Lots of trees, lots of owner occupied homes that are well kept. And it’s five minutes from school, and three blocks from the Denver city limits! It’s got a fabulous front and backyard, a garage, and a storage shed. There’s 1100 square feet to work with, 3 bedrooms, 1.5 baths, and a fabulously sized kitchen and dining room…great for entertaining! My understanding is that I’ll close in early September, and then begin the remodel. It needs a little love, but I’ve got the resources to do it, so I’m excited to learn and get to work! I’m hoping to move in around early December, but with contractors and so much going on, I’ll have to be flexible with that. So, come Christmas, come on out and I won’t have to put you on an air mattress! 

I’m heading out to Costa Rica tomorrow night to gallivant and work on my Spanish. A few days in the rain forest, ziplining through the canopy, beach, beach, beach, what could possibly go wrong? My Spanish will be put to the test, but I am so psyched to have my first full immersion experience. Professionally, I want so badly to be able to call my students’ parents directly, myself, without asking an interpreter to do it, to communicate with them about what is going on with their child. I’ve got a fabulous travel partner in Jeter, and am anxious for that adventure to begin.
Lastly, I’m amazed by how a lot of life is happening right now…dreams are coming together, relationships are growing here in Denver, and I can see God at work in the whole of my life right now. It’s been beautiful, and I am so very grateful. I am so blessed and am trying to soak in all of the goodness with a grateful heart. Each of you are a part of that beauty as well, so thank you for your friendship and encouragement on this journey.

I’m not sure what my internet access will be in Costa Rica, but I will try and post a few pics either here or on facebook as time allows. Stay tuned!

Graceful clutz

I can't believe i've made it this far in life, despite my best efforts to permanently maime myself along the way. Once, in high school, I was "sprinting" down the court during a JV basketball game on a fast break. I think I got too excited to be the first one down the court (because, let's be honest...that NEVER happened) that when the ball came my way, I leaped in the air to catch it, somehow got entirely tangled up with my own body, and came crashing down in a heap...without the ball. The upperclassmen told me they'd never seen such an amazing human pretzel with no outside assistance. What can I say...I've got skills. A few weeks back, I repeated a feat quite similar...down the stairs, in a dress, at a wedding. I can't really tell you exactly how it all went, but it was something like butt, shoulder, right knee left knee, shins, head, tuck, roll, bang, bang, bang, head first the rest of the way to the bottom. I thought I was going to die. My friends at the top of the stairs were planning our escape to the ER. It was epic. I'm clumsy enough to have these really bad falls but somehow athletic enough to not kill myself doing it. How's that for a claim to fame?

(the above picture was a really great idea I had to get two of my teammates up on a rolling log at a playground between games to see how long we could coordinate and keep it going. I think we all made it to the standing position on top and then, well, you can see what happened next).

I've got some updates I'll be putting up here before I head out to Costa Rica Tuesday night! Such a fun summer, and so much coming up!

This might make you laugh a little...

...or take you down memory lane depending on who you are.

http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/

I love Asperger's kids

S: "Leave me alone you FREAK!"
E: "Scotty, please stop calling other students names in the bathroom."
S: "He called me a name first! And how do you know I'm Scotty?!?"
E: "Because you're the only white boy in fourth grade." (thinks this, but does not say out loud.
S: "Well, maybe I'm an alien form of Scotty!"

Merry Christmas friends! I'm sitting at my kitchen bar, having some coffee and enjoying thinking about the vast time laid out before me, to be filled with sleep, drinking more coffee, family, friends, mountains, holding babies, snowshoeing and spending a day with my face in the snow while trying to learn to board. What could be better? It's the life of a teacher.

So, the entire month of December, and I'm not exaggerating, I didn't get to teach. I got to assess, and administer tests, and assess some more. It was a little unreal. I hate testing kids, but the good news is, I was able to see some real growth from all but one of my kids. And for that one kid, I now have a plan. Two of my 5th graders who have I spent a decent amount of time feeling hopeless about have taken off in their reading, after being stuck at a 1st grade level since, well, since first grade. I have worked so hard with their classroom teacher who came to me the 3rd week of school and said to me, "I just don't like them." I've talked to her often about finding something loveable about them, about how as long as she holds to her position, they will know, and continue to make her crazy. Then the behavior plan started working, and they started to turn the corner and actually do work for her. Then she was able to see that one of the students really was physically unable to sit still and focus (he has significant, undiagnosed, unmedicated ADHD) and she let him take breaks and run errands. And I'll be damned if those kids didn't freakin learn to read this semester. And I wish I could post pictures of just how plain proud these kiddos look everytime they crack open a book and are actually able to read and understand it. That face they make everytime I go to their classrooms and they see it's time to come read, and they dig inside their disaster zone desks for their chapter books instead of their picture books is why I do what they do.

I finally had a break through moment with one of my other kids the last day of school. His nickname is Eeyore, because this kiddo is just plain sad all of the time. He whines, he pouts, he kicks his chair, he throws paper and books, he is just a very unhappy child. This is probably one of the first kids who I would truly say at the age of 8 is clinically depressed and he breaks my heart. Frankly, because of all his behaviors, he is not the most fun kid to work with either. I've actually had to put a sign on my table where he sits that says Face Free Zone, because he is CONSTANTLY pouting and laying his head down on the table during our group time. SO, back to the breakthrough. On the last day of school I pulled my third graders into the hallway for a few minutes just to touch base before the holidays. I handed out candy, and then passed out reading awards for the growth they have made in reading. Do you remember Book it? Yeah, that program is still growing strong, so every kiddo earned a free personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut. My Eeyored is a tubby, round little kiddo, and I'm telling you his face lit up for the first time all year. We all applauded each other as the awards were passed out and the kids dispersed. But Eeyore, who usually speed walks away from me (because there is no running in the hallways...) hung back from the group and waited until they all disappeared into their classrooms. Then he looked me in the eyes, and simply said, "th-th-thanks Ms. Young" (did I forget to mention he's a stutterer?). He leaned down and gave me a big hug, turned, and speed walked away. I sat on the floor, stunned for a few moments, and my eyes just welled up. I get hugs and high fives all day long, but this kiddo has never given me the time of day, nor has he ever seemed proud, or happy, or grateful for that matter. Even though it has taken five months and a lot of frustration, it seems as though I have finally reached him, even if it took pepperoni pizza to do so. It may take a few months to do it again, but it was just another one of those moments that I hang onto for weeks to come.

So, there's my warm fuzzy for the holiday break. Wishing you all more warm fuzzy's than cold pricklies in the coming year. I cannot wait to see what 2009 has in store for all of us. Happy new year!