Newsletter 2: A Bunch of Lists

Hello Friends!

Let me tell you the things I have learned these last few weeks:

• students at the school I work at are not afraid of stopping by their teachers' homes and staying to chat for over an hour just because they are in the neighborhood
• over 7 people can fit in a taxi
  

• new kindergarteners need to learn that throwing scissors is "not ok"
• my favorite flavor of ice cream is sold here and can be obtained within walking distance of the school (I wasn't sure which list to put this statement under)
• God has taken away my old life and all the things I once looked to for satisfaction only to show me clearly the depths of satisfaction I can find in serving and knowing Him (Isaiah 19)

Pray for me:

• as I decide which church I ought to attend
• as I build relationships with the parents of my students
  

Praise God for:

• the loving staff at the school
• the joy I have getting up every morning and going to work

Because of His grace and through His grace I serve Him.

Thank you all for your care,

Eden

Isaiah 55

1 "Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.

2 Why spend money on what is not bread,
and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.

3 Give ear and come to me;
hear me, that your soul may live.
I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
my faithful love promised to David.

Taxi drivers: the World's Underecognized Thespians

I was traveling back home after taking Dale to the airport to fly her out of my life. On the way home I realized how enjoyable it can be to barter with taxi drivers…

Eden: Good evening. How much does it cost to get to…(my destination).
Taxi Driver: (looking a little sheepish) Oh, only 25 little soles…
Eden: (puts on a face of shock) 25 soles??? I normally pay 10.
Taxi Driver: 10? Why that’s so low! (tries to look like I beat him) 20 then.
Eden: (laughs) I won’t pay any more than 15
Taxi Driver: Oh but the traffic!
Eden: 15 is very reasonable
Taxi Driver: Oh but its so far away, Senorita! 18 then.
Eden: 15 and no more.
Taxi Driver: (laughs) Ok then, 15.

Hearing about the taxi driver’s family and business on the way back was just as entertaining - a conversation worth every centimo.

2 Bedtime Stories

Story 1:

Not long after school started, a new student joined one of my classes. She had not yet had the chance to purchase a uniform. For a week she came into class sporting clothes in her own unique style while the rest of the class donned the regular uniform… until today.

I laughed when one of the students noticed and said in a lifeless voice, “You are one of US now.”

Moral: Studies show that uniforms enhance learning. No studies show that uniforms enhance the feeling that you are a part of a creepy cult…yet.


Story 2:

One of my students is forever tired. Every morning it’s the same: he comes into my class, sits down, and then falls asleep on his desk until the bell rings and class starts. I pass him in the hall and he yawns. His name even sounds like the word “Yawn.”

One morning I needed a model for class and asked for a volunteer. No one wanted to be a model. Then, I decided it was time to utilize my sneaky emergency plan.

I held up a blanket and pillow, “this will be for a longer pose, so whoever wants to do it gets to lie down.”

Yawn, expression unchanging, turned around slowly, and rose his hand.
I smiled a crooked smile.


Moral: There is always a way to use the shortcomings of others’ to your advantage.



A photo of the teachers and administration of ICSL is now available! Just look below:

Their Creepy and their Cooky...

Yes, I too am now a fan of yearbookyourself.com.




Wow. Joel should have grown up in the 70's - he can don a turtleneck and long hairstyle like none other.

Maid for us

We have a maid. Her name is Elida. She is about 4'10." She likes to iron.

She comes to our house twice a week.

She washes our sheets, irons them, and puts them on our beds nice and neat.


She rearranges our shoes so that they are not in a jumbled mess in the closet.
She will make us supper.

Sometimes, when she irons pleats in our jeans, she will make us laugh.

When she is done ironing, she puts our folded clothes in piles for us to put in our drawers.
We love Elida.


Quote of the week:
Roomate: (walks in to the room) Guys.....
Rest of us: What?
Roomate: (whispers) So I was just upstairs and Elida ... well ... she even irons our ... UNDERWEAR!!!

Newsletter 1

8-07-08

Hello from Peru!

Today it was both rainy and sunny even though it never rains in Lima and is rarely sunny at this time of the year: fitting weather for my first day of teaching which was full of ups and downs.

I experienced classes of wide eyed kindergartners, over enthusiastic 7th graders, and down-to-earth 12th graders. Already I am beginning to know which students will flourish with whatever assignment they are given, which students will require extra grace, and which students are spiritually lost.

With all of this in mind however, I am so excited about this year. I am a new and unprepared teacher. However I have been learning that though I am the authority in my classroom, God is the one who is ultimately in charge of what happens in it. The unexplainable successes I experienced today are His fault.

So please continue to pray to the one who is in charge on my behalf.

Thank you!

Eden

PS: You know you just became a teacher when… you have a student request you as your friend on facebook. My roommates (also first year teachers) and I are going to start competing and seeing how many students we can get as fb friends. I will keep you informed.

attached photos:
1. me modeling the smocks my grade school students will wear and
2. a panoramic view of my brightly colored art room.

You know you have lived in Peru 3 weeks when:

• You don't stop yourself from kissing your American acquaintances on the cheek when you greet them.
• You start kissing other things

(wait! I can explain! This old Peruvian guy was telling me I had to do it - you can see him in the picture inwardly laughing at how he made the crazy americana do whatever he said).


New experiences this week:

• When you go to a Peruvian grocery store right as it opens, all the workers stand on each side of the entrance in two lines, saying good morning to the first customers. (Customer service is excellent here, so I wasn’t too surprised).
• Speaking of the grocery store. Dale and I learned to watch out for stocker stalkers (I don’t think excellent customer service includes following you home to make sure you make it ok – needless to say we took a different route).
• I had my first taste of wine – at church. I guess they thought they should use the real thing for communion.

Below is a picture of 3 teachers I will be working with being sneezed on by a llama - I did not take the picture but wish I had.

You know you have lived in Peru for 2 weeks when:

• You have to stop yourself from kissing your American acquaintances on the cheek when you greet them.
• You are not bothered when vehicles you are riding in follow the white dashed line rather than drive alongside it.
• You automatically tune out hisses, whistles, and weird pick-up-lines in broken English when walking down the street.
  

Quote of the Week

Me: I kissed a random stranger today.
Amanda: Really! Oooh...
Me: His name is Miguel. He is a money changer.
Dale: Oooh Miguel.

Ok, so maybe 2 weeks of cultural acclimation is still not enough for us.

A Day in the Life of Pre-Teaching Eden

7ish Get up, run maybe, get ready.

8ish Leave for the school using public transportation here. To keep in mind: The man comfortably reading the morning paper is not a passenger on our bus but the driver.

9ish Arrive at school and begin Spanish classes. During Spanish classes we chat in Spanish, learn which culturally inappropriate/rude/comical actions we have committed lately, and learn other cultural differences such as the difference between...

... a United States Guinea Pig













... and a Peruvian Guinea Pig













I still do not know which is weirder.

1ish Go on a field trip to help us learn where resources are here, have a meeting, or work at the school. Today we went on a field trip on a tourist bus to downtown Lima.















5ish Get home, eat, relax, maybe go out and do something.

9:30 Dale falls asleep.

11:30 Eden falls asleep.

The Evil Thing

When we first got to our home, we saw one of these sitting on our table.

We had never seen one before and didn't know what it was for. Eden said, "Hey, I know what it is. A rat catcher. It pops up and you can use it to catch mice running across your floor without touching them." Below is my view of what the purpose of the strange item was for.


Soon however, I found out it was really simply a food cover, used to keep flies and such away. According to my roommate, it isn't just a strange Peru tool either but is commonly used in the states. Definitely not half as cool as I thought it was, but at least we were able to let it fulfill its purpose. See how it was put to use below.

Fruiticious

At the grocery store, Dale and I bought many different types of fruit and took pictures as we opened and tried each one. At the staff barbecue, we found out that some fruits you are supposed to eat plain, while others you should not eat plain - in other words - the Peruvians on staff at ICS laughed at us - for about 5 minutes.
This one was impossible to eat - unless you know how to eat rocks.




This one was good - like a melon sort of.


Tart deliciousness.


Cheap starfruit.


Really good flavor but with a lot of seeds - we just eat the seeds too and its all good.




Pretty when cut but with the taste of pure orange peel. The Peruvians laughed the hardest when we said that we had tried this one.

I can fly.

So we had a ICS staff barbecue where all us new staff were able to meet the old staff. Afterward, we walked to a mall on the side of a cliff to go bowling. Unfortunately, it was league night and no alleys were open. Fortunately, my room mate, Amanda, piped in.

Amanda: We can go paragliding.
Jens (old staff member): Seriously?
Amanda: Yeah.
Jens: You all really want to?
Everyone: (says or does something that means yes)

So because Jens knew the paragliding guy, we were able to fly for only $20. Usually Americans fly for $55.

The experience was like one of those wonderful dreams where you can fly and float around and above all mankind. I was strapped to a Peruvian flying me around, but I still felt incredibly free. Near the end he did some dips, rushing turns, and free falls which were thrilling. And then he pulled back in to land and I watched my first Lima sunset over the ocean.

Peru Journal Entry 1

I am in a different country! Here are some lengthy journal entries Dale and I wrote along with some photographs.

Wednesday, July 15, 2008

Eden

When we arrived in Lima I quickly realized we were not in the U.S. anymore as I asked someone a question in English and was answered with a blank stare. I quickly made a switch to a grammatically incorrect phrase in Spanish and was able to receive the information I needed. We went through customs, got our luggage, and saw signs which said ICS Lima on them. We soon met the people attached to the signs – the principal and the secretary – and then met others who had decided to stay up late to greet us. We sat around the airport for one hour, waiting for three other girls to arrive, threw our luggage on a teacher’s van, and drove to our lovely home. Our home is spacious. It is a two story building and we also have a roof as well (so if Joel comes to visit he can sleep on it with me). I will post a video of my home on my blog later. There are a lot of things we’ll need to learn to get used to. Particularly, we will need to get accustomed to dealing with hired help – we have a guard, a maid, and we may end up with a gardener. The principal says that we are providing these people with jobs, so I am trying to stop assuming that by having these people work for me I become a wealthy and snobbish American.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Dale

What a long day it’s been! After going to a nearby gym with Sue, we went grocery shopping at Metro, a nearby supermarket (or “supermercado”). That was quite an adventure, taking two hours. Eden and I got every type of fruit that we hadn’t tried. Oh, and star fruit, even though we’ve had it before (they were only something like four cents each).

In the afternoon we went to Doug and Sue’s house to utilize their Internet access (or their neighbor’s, rather). We had a lot of online-catching up to do

This evening we picked up Melinda at her apartment on the way over to “Eidle Wies”, a nearby panaderia. Eden ordered a variety of empanadas for supper, and for desert, some devilishly-good chocolate cake, kind of like a ding dong. After walking Melinda home, we came back here. Right now Amanda’s walking around with her camera, narrating an apartment tour to send home. We’ll make our own tour pretty soon, so keep checking Eden’s blog.

Eden

Here are a few stories I took from the day. At the gym, one of the workers sat down with us and tried to sell us membership for 15 months. Just wanting to be guests at the gym, at least at first, we politely turned him down – saying we still need to think about it, but he took our number and will call us. On the way out, he gave us each our first Peruvian side-of-face kiss. As we walked to Sue’s car, Dale turned to me and said sorrowfully, “But I wanted to save my first kiss for my husband!”

The reason we spent two hours at Metro (the “supermercado”) was because:

1. It took time to find out where everything is.

2. When we went to the counter, we realized that we should not just take everything we buy up to the cashier to pay for it and call it good - certain items need to be weighed in a different section of the store and others need to be weighed in a more different section of the store. So after waiting in a line for a long time, we had to get out of line, go to the balance, and weigh some items, get a sticker put on them, and go back to wait in line for a long time again.

3. We had to walk 7 minutes to and from our home each way. It would have been more like a 5 minute walk each way, but we had to cross two busy streets and driving is so different here – drivers are very aggressive but also very defensive (which means everybody pulls out in front of everybody else aggressively, knowing that the other person will respond defensively and stop). We are praying none of us get hit by a car while here – even if we do have insurance – though don’t worry about us as we are all still to chicken to cross the road (at least when traffic isn’t yet clear).

Speaking of chicken, we bought a whole one today at Metro. It looked just like a whole chicken you would buy from the states (and it only cost us <$2.50). When we got home, Dale began chopping up and found something inside the chicken. Inside the chicken was a package (read this like I am whispering in a low voice) and … inside the package … was …

...a chicken head

…two chicken feet

…a chicken heart

…other nasty chicken things which I won’t even mention

(Ok, now you can go back to reading this normal)

At Doug and Sue’s house, I was able to chat with Joel, Grace, Tim, and my father online. The younger ones gave me some interesting ideas on how we could make use of extra chicken parts. Here are some of the ideas:

1. make a doll
2. make a delicious dessert
3. give the delicious dessert to someone you don't like
4. make chicken foot candles for a creepy room effect

Oh yes, one more thing. Being 10 blocks from the ocean does things to my hair. Dale says I look like Richard Simmons. Lord have mercy on me.

Hooray for insurance! Now I can throw caution to the wind!

At training (which I am back from - 4 days till I leave for Peru!) a woman came from the insurance company to explain to all of us how to access our accounts online. She clicked on the Korean section of the website to demonstrate how we can find a list of good doctors all around the world. She clicked on the first doctor on the list the website gave her and sure enough - a Kwak.

Oh yes, I have an announcement: Heather M. has started a blog. There you can see the best first post ever! With Joel and Caroline both also starting a blog, this has been an eventful month in the blogging world!

YTA

Hello my name is Eden and I am a You Tube Junkee. Before you judge me let me explain:

Reason 1: Barats and Bereta - It all started with their Happy Mother's day video and went down hill from there.

Reason 2: two words: Alex Trebek

Reason 3: That one video with the guy who hates Americans and their subtitles

Reason 4: Random foreign music videos

Reason 5: Hollywood's power over me

Reason 6: Great videos people I have met have placed online.

To my family and friends: I apologize if my addiction has harmed you in any way in the past. I will try and get over this.

And they’ll know we are Christians…

I am sitting in the Atlanta airport nearing the end of a 5 hour wait there for my flight back home. I am bored.

Next to me a woman is quizzing her son on Bible trivia, apparently for some competition in Wichita. After a while they stop. The boy picks his nose. He looks about 17 years old. He picks up “Boy’s Life” magazine from his carry-on luggage and begins to read jokes.

Bible Quiz Boy: Hey, do you want to know where I get all my funny jokes? This magazine here (holds up “Boy’s Life” magazine). How do you keep a bull from charging?

Mother: Do you need to go to the bathroom?

Bible Quiz Boy: How do you keep a bull from charging?

Mother: You had better go to the bathroom, it’s going to be a long flight.

Bible Quiz Boy: (pauses) … How do you keep a bull from charging?

Mother: Take away his credit card?

Bible Quiz Boy: (disappointed look)

Mother: Am I right?

Bible Quiz Boy: (doesn’t respond)

As we waited for luggage at the Wichita airport, I quickly took a photo of Bible Quiz Boy. Just as I pushed the button, he swung his drink up and took a quick swig – just like Napoleon Dynamite. Yessssssssssss.

A rare shot of Bible Quiz boy alongside a random cowgirl.

3 Posts for the Price of 1!

First an announcement: Hey, did you all know that Caroline Fisher (Peak) started a blog? She has already produced two posts in which she blames me for things and talks about her new baby. So check it out if you know her.

Second a photograph: of the new staff members at the school in which I will be teaching (the older man in the photograph is the director, not a new staff member) (and the llama...I am not certain of what he is doing in the photo).

We are sitting in the home office where all the behind the scenes work is done for the International schools.

Third the Best Quotes of this week:

The things we are learning keep on coming up in our conversations:

Allison: Look at us. We just went to an All American Baseball game and now are eating American food at an All American restaurant.

Karen: Hey, it’s like what we have been learning about. You know, when the speaker talked about how we will go through an overseas grieving process and we will want to do things from our own country? We must be starting our grieving as we are eating all the things we are going to miss in the United States.

Everyone pauses in contemplation.

Elizabeth: (takes a sip of her chocolate malt and smiles) I like grieving.

All week long we heard that one of the speakers here would give a talk on "sexual purity" - always an enjoyable and non-awkward thing to listen to. Anyway, one of the speakers shared about how women are attracted to godly men. After the presentation, a guy approached a group of us girls saying, “Hey, any of you ladies wanna go to sonic? We can pray afterward.”

I would use the words "Southern" and "Hospitality" to describe the staff who serve us food here, though many aren't used to their kind. I overheard this short conversation as the staff left the kitchen and a group of young training participants were still sitting around.

Older person: Well, we’ll see all y’all young people later.

Younger person: We will see all of you old people later.

Naughty or Nice?

Dear Mom and Dad,

I am having so much fun here at Pre Field Orientation. We can swim, play games and I am making lots of friends.

Also, I am getting to know my future colleagues and they are getting to know me through personality tests and just through conversation:

Lauren: So we were on the roof of the Peabody hotel and Jessica leaned over the ledge to take a picture.

Rebecca: Yes, she was being so...dangerous. No, that’s not the word I want to use. Not dangerous…

Lauren: Risky?

Rebecca: No not exactly risky…

Debbie: risk taking?

Rebecca: Maybe…

Eden: stupid?

Here everyone was like, “Whoa." "What?! No!” “Eden, I thought you were nice!” “I am going to tell the director on you.” (Actually I think that’s the fifth time someone has said something to the equivalent of “I am going to tell the director on you” to me this week).

Sometimes I am nice, sometimes, people just have it coming.

Have a NICE week,

Eden

Quote of the Week

“We don’t throw food here.”
-The first words the director of all the International Schools program spoke to me.

(Right now I am in Mississippi training for my overseas teaching job with all the other new teachers. We are in a school/church/schurch where we do get internet!)

Best Quotes of the Week

At cousin Samuel’s country wedding:
Eden: Where can we eat our food at?
Leah (Duncan): We could go sit on the hay bale.
Joel: On the hay bale or hay Ba-al?

“Every teacher has this book. Its like…the book that every teacher has.”
-Me

“Our parents were so cheap, we would all get in the rides at the department stores and instead of putting a quarter in our parents would shake the machine.”
-Joel

Photo's from the country wedding:




The Hay Baals








My cheap Parents







A cowboy





And I wouldn't be a true Christian if I did not post a verse on my blog every now and then:

"How can you say, 'I am not defiled; I have not run after the hay Baals'?
-Jeremiah 2: 23 - from the NYV (New Yokel Version) study bible.

"P"eru

As most our family was home this morning - a rare thing in the summer - mother decided to have a family meeting concerning our schedule this summer.

The photographs show well what occurred in the meeting.

Mom: I have written here in my date-book "Eden and Dale P." Do either of you know what I meant by that?

Dale: What day did you write that on?

Mom: The 14th of July.

Dale: Oh, you must have meant Eden and Dale Peru – meaning that is the day we leave for Peru.

Joel: (initiates his inner little-boy-humor and destroys the business-like atmosphere of the meeting) Hehe – Eden and Dale p. Why not just write down Peru?

Me: Yeah. This summer Dale and I are going to P!

Joel, Grace, and I: (laughter)

Mom, Dad, and Dale: (ignore us and continue to plan)

Eden: We are going to P on the 14th be exact.

Joel, Grace, and I: (more laughter)