Around the World

When Liridon told Sara, Vanessa, and I that we would be teaching seperately from now on, I was pretty scared. First of all, I didn't have a great connection with the students because we would just walk in, sit down, and read out of the book until the bell rang. Secondly, I wasn't sure how they would respond to me as someone completely different from them. However, the next day Liridon sat down with us and set up a schedule. Vanessa teaches the two eleventh grade classes, and Sara and I have the six tenth grade classes split between us.
I like all three of my classes, but my favorite is 10-2. Liridon is in charge of this class, which just means he's sort of like a homeroom teacher or advisor to them. There are about two people in this class of 34 who can speak English fairly well, but the rest...well. I can only hope for a miracle. Just kidding. I have a lot of fun with them because I plan things to do and what to teach, plus they like me. Or I think they do. Most of the time I think they think I'm ridiculous and they tolerate me because I laugh at them and they laugh at me. Last week, I taught them how to play Around the World.
Around the World is something I played in middle school and high school Spanish. Two people at a time stand up and compete to say the answer first, and then the winner moves on to the next person and the loser sits back down. I had to explain this a couple of times to my class, even with someone translating. After about ten minutes of a lot of people yelling and a lot of me trying to demonstrate the way to play, we finally started. I decided to play with ordinal numbers. For example: I would say "Your number is...62." and they would have to say "sixty-second". The hardest number for them was five because they would always try to say five-th. I even wrote it on the board and they still didn't quite get it.
I had to throw someone out of the room for a couple minutes, do some seat rearranging, and take toys away, but everyone had fun, even the girl in the back with the attitude problem. Each time I had to yell or discipline someone, I tried to remember what my teachers in school did.
At the end, everyone came up to me to say goodbye and I left school on a high. There wasn't a winner, but they did so well that I brought them a snack the next time we had class.
Yes, I will definitely miss my students when we leave.
-Jin

Visiting old friends in Albania

a camping trip in the gorge

eating Greek food, it was so good!

Easter Morning We had an outdoor worship service

we visited some poor families and brought them food and clothing





climbing mountains

The Internal Struggle

I sat in the curve of our large green paisely couch, cross legged. My elbows resting on my knees and the heels of my hands pressed into my eyes. Lately my head has just been swimming with mixed emotions and lots of questions and sometimes, time away and alone is the only thing that seems to help. After being away for about two and a half weeks, from our trip to Albania, our service week in the capital and then our week of vacation in Greece, coming back here felt a little like coming home. It felt good to walk the streets here and see familiar faces and to go back into the shops that we frequent and to pop our heads into one of ourclasses, just to say hello and let them know we were "home". Since returning, we have had a lot of changes. Our new teaching schedule has each of us teaching individualy instead of in groups. This has been an adjustment for all of us, some more than others. But also coming back brought a lot of mixed feelings. It brought a lot of excitement along with a lot of anxiety. I know that I am looking forward to going home but the thought of going home scares me. I cannot imagine going back to Pennsylvania and having my life be anything like it was before. How can I put all of this behind me
and move forward with college? Do I need to put it behind me? I wish I knew how I could somehow mix the two lives I have. The life I have come to lead and my life that I left behind to come here. It would be so easy for me to go home and pretend that none of this ever happened. I'm good at that. I could go home and fall back into a daily routine of family life, work, and friends. I know that I do not want that at all. I want to go back home and be a changed person. I want to go home on a "high". With only 3 weeks left here, time is rapidly coming to a close. It's going to be hard to say good-bye. Good-bye to our outreach coordinators, who we have come to know and see as family. Good-bye to our students who have become friends. Good-bye to a lot of other people who were in one way or another connected to us. Yes, it is going to be hard and there will most likely be some tears, but when I go back to America, I want to feel not like I left something behind, but that I'm leaving with a part of this culture deeply routed into my heart. These last 3 weeks here I want to do so much more than just teach English and settle back into the routine. I want to try to reach out even more to my students. I want to step
far outside of my comfort zone and challenge myself to be the person I always wanted to be. When I go home, I do not want to look back on this time and regret anything. I make it a point in my life to never regret. I cannot fill my mind with "what if's" and reliving the past or I can never be satisfied with the present. Things here in K-Land really are going well, and for the most part I think we are all in fairly good spirits. We each have our own set of opinions, fears, and points of excitement with being here and what I've said, sums up everything that I have been feeling recently. Mixed feelings have become something that I am oh too familiar with, but right now, it's ok because I know that it's for all the right reasons and they will all resolve themselves.
~*~ Lakyn Parks ~*~