Wednesday, December 9

Today was one of the days this week we spent half of the day at Gracia Abundante to practice for our Christmas program. So we didn’t have chapel today as usual and had an early lunch so we could be to the church at 1pm and practice til 4:30 pm. After lunch everyone piled on buses, headed down the mountain and arrived at the church. The church auditorium/sanctuary is spacious, but there was NO air moving in there; it was dead, hot air. So you put a whole school worth of kids from K4-9th grade in that space for 3 ½ hours….you can do the math. After about 2 hours, everyone was hot, sweaty, tired, bored and ready to be done, including me and the other teachers. The kids are also expected to behave well in this situation, too, which can be done, but it’s difficult. There were rows of chairs to sit in and the kids had to stay seated when they weren’t practicing on stage. We ran through the whole show 3 times before the end of practice and then were allowed to leave. I couldn’t believe how tired and drained I was trying to keep my energy, patience, and sanity. I was ready to go to bed at 6pm, no joke. We were starving too because we had had an earlier lunch and been working all afternoon, dancing, up and down, etc. We all tromped out into Gracias to eat dinner at Bella Celaque, one of our fav restaurants with tipica food. We just all sat there, tired, and when our food came, ate in silence because we were so hungry. It felt so much later than 6 pm after dinner, but we stayed in town a little longer to get some groceries and internet. Finally we headed back up the mountain to collapse into bed and get ready for a full day of school tomorrow. I am not looking forward to Friday’s practice.