Mister Jenny

I’m finally back in the groove of life! I have been back a week and a half, but I feel like I have been here a month now, which is a good thing. Things are going well and I have been very busy.

We have two new kids, Heydy (pronounced Haiti) and Oliver. Heydy will be 2 this month and Oliver is 3, they are brother and sister. They are very well behaved and quiet.They entertain each other, its pretty cute and they both have beautiful smiles. Other bittersweet news is that we lost 3 boys. The good news is they have started school! It’sencouraging to see theparents putting them in school to educate the next generation. Many kids in this neighborhood do not go to school and many Hondurans only go to school until sixth grade. So it’s bittersweet, they will be missed, but they are moving on and growing up J

With this transition, and the start of a new school year, we have reorganized the “big kids.” We have moved up two 3 year olds into the big kid class, so this week it was fun working with them on holding a pencil correctly and having more responsibility. Thanks to family and friends, I got to bring down coloring books, puzzles, picture cards, sidewalk chalk, little toys and balloons for the kids. They have enjoyed using all the new stuff and are excited to learn. Also, at Christmas a church in the States donated a lot of books, so many that they still are not all here yet. The kids love to hold a book and look at the pictures. It’s been fun teaching them how to hold the books and look at the pictures from left to right. When they get their own books, its fun to listen to them all talk through the story/ pictures out loud.

Here is a funny story from the big kid class, with 2 brothers in it now (since the younger one moved up). After doing all the usual stuff, then going over the new picture vocabulary cards we got to color pictures. As they were coloring, Javier- 3 asks me a question. I don’t even remember the question because I was distracted by the beginning.. Mister Jenny (pronounced Meeester Jenny). I am used to being called Miss (mees), but mister made me laugh. Their mom always says this when she drops them off, and of course I don’t want to correct her. So I was thinking, this is my opportunity to correct the boys, then they can correct their mom. I explain, ‘mister’ means a man, and ‘miss’ means a woman. I am a woman so I am ‘miss’ Jenny. They kept saying it; I kept explaining it. The whole class started saying it, then the other little 3 year old girl got it. She started calling me Miss Jennys (she likes to add the ‘s’ to my name). The end of the time, everyone except the two boys were calling me miss Jenny. The boys…. still calling me Mister Jenny. Oh well, some battles take a little more time.

Another funny story about these brothers, frustrating but funny, is every day at naptime. We have learned they have to be separate from each other and separate from the other kids. So all the kids sleep in the main room, Javier in the back classroom, and Gabriel in the office. The first 30 minutues of naptime every day they are yelling back and forth to each other, “brother, whats up?” “brother what are you doing?” “brother”… this, “brother”…. that. It’s pretty frustrating to get them quiet, but it’s actually really cute that they are so terrible together and love each other.

(here is a picture of Gabriel and Javier from the fall)

I’m glad to be back and will continue to keep everyone involved by posting the stories and pictures of my life and casa de luz!