angels we have heard on high!

First week of Advent: ANGELS

My family celebrates each week of Advent with a different character from the Christmas story (apparently that's not how all families do it :)). The first week we talk about the angels and have Secret Angels (like Secret Santas). So, since the teacher gets to decide everything and I miss Advent with my family.... this week, I had my class participate! We read Luke 2 and learned different Christmas songs each day (they don't know any Christmas carols!) We also drew out Secret Angel names ... by the end of the week every single one of my kids knew who their secret angel was, including mine. So.... we may need to work on the keeping secrets thing. :) But, overall it was a wonderful way to begin getting ready for Christmas. The weather here is so nice and I don't watch tv to see ads, so I kind of forget it's Christmas. The girls and I had a bonfire a few weekends ago and in the middle of chopping down wood for the fire, Kirsty chopped down a tree that we've decorated with lights and ornaments and that's about as winter-y the house has gotten!

I finished teaching the choreography this week, so now we just have to perfect the dance! They have moved the program to be next Monday, December 14, so that gives us a lot more time. Wednesday and Friday of this week we are getting out of classes at noon to go to Gracias and practice on the stage where we'll be performing. The program is a really big deal- people from the school in Tegucigalpa are coming and it's going to be televised. The outfits are 525 lempiras each because a seamstress is making all of them. That's about $25 each which is a LOT of money for the families here. That's kind of frustrating because the students will only wear it once, but if they don't have money to buy them they can't be in the program. As teachers we've pretty much decided to pay for any of our students so that they can be a part of the Christmas ,program, but it's a little frustrating. It's an expensive school so most of the students are from wealthy families, but there are also quite a few scholarship students and I wish there weren't expenses that caused division.

I think it'd be really great to find some families from the United States that would be willing to support students for the Vida Abundante Schools, so if anyone is interested , let me know and maybe when I'm home at Christmas I can get more information out.

Speaking of being home for Christmas.... that's in two weeks! I almost can't believe it. Things have gone so quickly here and I'm sure with our Christmas programming, it will just go faster. I'm really excited to go home but not really excited about the snow. I've almost forgotten what real cold feels like :(

Hope your weekends are wonderful, pray for me and my kids this week that we don't kill each other working on this dance! And that the boys won't die of boredom while I teach the girls for 2 hours a day! Second week of Advent: Shepherds! Woo!