School Board Meeting in my PJ's

Yup! You read it correctly. I attended a school board meeting in my pj's! It happens to be school spirit week at Santiago Christian Academy where I am currently teaching a class of juniors and seniors, environmental science. Yesterday was Pajama day, so OF COURSE I went in my pj's, slippers, and robe with my hair up and a bit messy. Since I don't teach until the end of the day, I had to head to my meeting in my pj's. It was rather comical, when a teacher was asked to join us to answer a question we all had. After seeing Kelly walk by the room where we were having our meeting, I stepped out to ask her to come in for a moment. She responded, "I'm not exactly dressed for a meeting." To which I responded by stepping further out where she could see me and asking, "and I am??" Needless to say, her sweatpants and sweatshirt with slippers, was dressed up compared to my cotton pajama set.

Puppy

I've written about the WEIRD looking dogs that walk the streets here in Santiago, but last Saturday, I saw a puppy. I was walking back to the school campus where I had left our car to take the metro downtown. I had gone with one of my Chilean friends from church. Sandra and I were almost back to the school, about 1 block away, when I saw this little girl "loving on" a puppy. As we got closer, I asked the little girl if the puppy was hers. She told me no and then after closer inspection of the puppy, I realized that this poor puppy had been thrown out on the street to die or fend for itself. Well at less than 3 months old, this puppy was on its deathbed. SOOOO I called Doug and asked if we could bring her home. His answer was a hesitant yes, so off we went to the vet. Sandra was such a help in this new realm of Spanish conversation. The puppy didn't do well for the first day, but now she is doing GREAT! Except she, just like a 3 month old baby, loves to cry and fuss. Oh well, this too shall pass. Meet "Rosita Kiwi." We call her Kiwi.

Kiwi on Saturday after she had been here for 1 day. Check out those ribs! She's finally beginning to fill in. Now she's REALLY SPUNKY!!!

Hannah loving on our new puppy!

I bought Kiwi a collar today. I wish that they had a pink one available, but I just couldn't buy her a blue one. Afterall she is a female!

For now, we have to keep the dog, Chloe that we are "fostering" away from Kiwi, in case Kiwi has some kind of communicable disease. Chloe, who has been a mother to a litter of puppies before, hears Kiwi's fussing and SOOO wants to love on her. I can't wait to see them together. They'll be SOOO cute!!! The vet says that Kiwi should be about the same size as Chloe, but is a mix of German Shepherd and Terrior. I love it! I've always loved German Shepherds and labs, but never liked their size. We don't have a big enough yard to be fair to a big dog, so we had been looking into adopting a small or medium size dog. Chloe is a medium size dog, and hopefully Kiwi will be too!

Chloe our "foster" dog.

PRAY FOR TEACHERS!!!

Here in Santiago, we have an international school. It is run by ABWE and therefore finding teachers to serve falls to us. Currently there is a real need for teachers beginning this August. Without teachers to teach our young people, we are then asked to step in and teach. As ABWE missionaries, not having teachers for our school directly affects our ability to minister to nationals, not in the school sense, but in the church and evangelism setting. Since Heather is a certified teacher she has been elected to serve on the school board and it is truly difficult to see our kids go without a proper education due to lack of teachers. Therefore, although Heather is homeschooling our children, she has begun teaching an environmental science class at SCA. Doug also has been facilitating a class of economics for one of our high school seniors. Would you as a mature, Christian individual consider serving on the mission field as one of our short term teachers? If you as an individual can’t come, would you consider supporting a teacher who is willing to come?Regardless of what you can or cannot do, would you please pray that God would provide teachers for our young people? If you have any questions, please contact me!

Tuna

So, do we have isles at the grocery store in the states that are dedicated to just tuna?? I don't remember having THAT much Tuna to pick from. Here you can find just about any kind of tuna you can dream of. Large chunks, small chunks, in water, in oil, in light oil (I didn't know there was such a thing...) etc... I'm awed by the isle of tuna, but I guess in the states we have whole isles of cereal. Each country has their thing. I'm still finding out if tuna is really Chile's thing. But they certainly like variety.

An example of a mixed breed here

When searching the adoption pedigree website for a dog, we ran across this picture of "lucky." Doug response was, "WHAT IS THAT?!?! Lucky, wasn't so lucky was he?!?!?" As many have learned from Susan Boyle from Britain's got Talent, never judge someone by the outside, only their character!

Sights, Sounds, and Customs Series Volume 3

Imagine yourself entering a large trafic circle in a city of 6 million. There are cars going everywhere! When should I pull out into this mess?? Wait, the lights about to change to red over there, so then I'll get my shot! Ok, the light's red now, these cars will pass and I'll go. The cars pass and yet I'm still waiting, and waiting. Waiting for what you may ask?.....A horse and ox cart. Yup A HORSE AND OX CART! They weer on the inside lane of the trafic circle and had to move over 3 lanes to exit the trafic circle. I don't know how these drivers and horses can handle the rattling of nerves. I don't like a trafic circle in a car and you certianly won't see me in a cart going around one anytime soon!!!

Cleaning Up

When moving into someone else's house, or what used to be someone else's house, there are changes that have to be made and things that need to be done. Our yard, in comparison to US yards, is VERY SMALL! But here, it is an average sized yard. However, our yard seems a bit bigger now, as we have begun the clean up process of overgrown trees, TOO MANY vines, and put up a small fence to keep the dog that we are doggysitting in the back yard.

Among these projects was the "small" clean up of the HUGE palm tree in our back yard. It took Doug about 10 hours in total to cut off all the dead palm frawns and later today, we hope to go into the neighbor's yard to safely reach the last 2 or 3.

Doug hidden up in the tree as he started the project.

Doug about to finish "trimming" with a view of the last 2
he can only reach from the neighbor's yard.

Doug on around the 16th rung of the ladder smiling all the way.

One thing no one told us before he started, was that these dead palm frawns are GREAT for mice and ant nest. At one point he had ants crawling all over him!