Still Alive and Kicking!

I know, I know, it's been about a million years since my last post (a little sorry about that actually, I just discovered that a post I had written a while back hadn't actually gotten posted...whoops, but that's about normal when it comes to me and computers.) In addition to that, not long after Christmas, my laptop got sick, threw a fit for a few weeks, then went into a coma, taking all my documents and pictures with it. Occasionally I like to turn it on just to dash my hopes of it getting beyond the "temporary" glowing blank screen.  It never does. Sadness.

Anyway...a broken computer has yet to stop me, or a malfunctioning replacement tablet (again, what IS IT with me and computers????).  I finally used my brain and realized that I could sign in on another computer and make a post. Hurrah!  I am rambling...

So, since the last post life has continued. My students are still just as loud as ever (basically given up on that front), but they have grown up so much! I love thinking back over the year and comparing where they were at the beginning of the year to now. If only because it's really cool to realize that they came in not reading at all, and now most of them are already reading on a basic first grade level (if only it weren't for those darn sight words, but they are an extra challenge for ESL kids). They love reading and writing, and they're enthusiasm is exciting to mold and challenge!

Basically, they are more than making up for the stress of being a first year teacher, and making being a second year teacher a great deal of fun, even if it is still often stressful.  I can't wait to be a third year teacher!

Christmas in England:

I haven't put many pictures from Christmas up on facebook (due to the aformentioned dead laptop), but I will put what pictures I had already uploaded on just to give you a taste of what an "English Christmas" is like when you go with a real, live English person who also happens to be an awesome friend. Basically, it's a really great experience.

The food:  

-English people eat a lot of the same foods Americans eat, which I know, is quite a shock, but they also have some traditionally "Englishy" foods which are fun to try, mostly because they aren't super weird and it doesn't involve eating bugs. 

Baked beans:

The British love their baked beans.  They aren't quite the same as American baked beans, and more importantly, they are eaten a lot more.  Breakfast, lunch, dinner, any time is time for baked beans! ...and peas.  If you want to move to England, learn to like baked beans and peas.  :)

Baked beans on toast

Christmas dinner:

In a word: Yummy!

I had parsnips, pigs in a blanket (wrapped in bacon, not bread), carrots, and Yorkshire pudding (the white bread looking thing (pudding doesn't mean the same thing in England as in America). Also, Christmas pudding (kind of like dark fruit cake with all raisins, drizzled in brandy, and set on fire). 

And to top it all off, you get to pull a Christmas cracker! Which was very fun, and had a toy and paper crown it it, and generally made me feel like I was in a book.  :)

Then we watched the Christmas broadcast from the Queen.  

It was much more fun than watching the State of the Union address from the president. 

Also, a lot shorter.

Fun things to do in England at Christmas:

1. Go see a pantomime!

Which isn't actually pantomimed.  Actually it's a really fun play where the cast interacts with the audience and generally does a lot of singing and telling jokes. And you are supposed to eat ice cream during the intermission.  Even though it's about ten degrees outside.  Don't ask me why. 

2. Walk down the longest pedestrian pier in the world at South End.   

If you manage not to get blown off, and you've thawed out at the end in the cafe with hot chocolate, ride the train back.

3. Go watch a bell-ringer's practice! 

Oh, wait, you don't have a super-cool best friend who also happens to be a bell-ringer and has a bell-ringer for a dad?  Sigh...too bad.

Well, if you did, it would be a really unique experience!  Jacqui's dad took us to a practice in a church that was basically older than America. He showed me where the bells hang and how they worked (you can't be in the actual room with them while they ring or you'd go deaf), and then part of the way through the practice the leader let me help ring a bell! (probably one of the coolest parts of the whole trip). Jacqui actually knows how to ring bells when they are doing "rounds" (where each bell is rung in a circle by size, then they change order for a while until they are back into the original order).

4. See some rain! It is England after all!

It rained so much the days before Christmas that the park flooded. But Christmas day was gorgeous! And cold. Really cold.  The way Christmas ought to be.

5. See some old buildings. 

As in, really really "older than the pilgrims" old. England is full of them, so it really isn't hard.  Jacqui and I went walking through the countryside to a little town where we had a "cream tea" in a proper little tea room (Pride and Prejudice, anyone?) and she showed me some of the really old houses, and how to tell if they were actually old or not.  Apparently, if the house looks like the drawing of a five year old, it's probably the real deal. This is caused by the old timbers of the house warping over the years. Also, if it has random window shaped areas of plaster, that's because there was a law that taxed houses by the window, so people solve the problem by getting rid of the windows!

5. See a castle.  

Even better, catch a train to Wales and see a castle! 

These are pictures of the castle in Cardiff that my dad and I visited. You walk down a street in the town thinking "la-dee-da, I wonder how far it is to the castle?"  Then it basically appears in the middle of downtown.  It was a little hard to wrap my mind around.  The castle was owned as a vacation home by a very rich man for a long while, so inside the castle is spectacularly decorated with gold leaf and murals and fancy furniture...very impressive.

6. Go to London! 

There are so many places to go and see! A lot of the big museums are free (like the National Gallery where you get to see paintings by Monet and Van Gogh and all the other painters you learned about in school, and the museum whose name I can't remember where you get to see the Rosetta Stone!)

Definitely ride the busses in London.  The tube is fun, but the busses are cheaper and allow for so much more sightseeing!  

London is full of surprises, like this handy dandy pidgeon toilet!

Not to mention Platform 9 and 3/4 in King's Cross Station where you can get a fun picture! (which is actually in a wall, being as J.K. Rowling was thinking of the wrong train station when she wrote about it, but it's still cool).

Which leads me to...

7. The Harry Potter Studios! Definitely worth the trip! Especially if you are the kind of person who actually watches those "making of" videos on DVD's for fun, not because you are just too lazy to get off the couch. Ahem....

You get to visit the actual studios and see the actual props and stages used when they made the movies. You also get to see the costumes, prothesises, and animitronics that they used, like Buckbeak and Hagrid's head!

The Great Hall

The Chessmen

A wizard's duel!

                   

             

Yeah, we're nerds...get over it!

So basically, Paraguay is great and I had a great Christmas. School gets out mid-June for winter break and then the new school year starts the last week of July. I am planning on coming back to the States at Christmas, and I can't wait to see everybody! I am immensely grateful for facebook, and I really appreciate everybody who has sent me messages, it keeps me feeling not quite so far away. And you know, if anybody has the urge to visit South America, Paraguay is a good place to visit! ;)

British English and Spanish Subtitles

So, apparently having an English roommate means watching British TV shows.  Not that I'm complaining, I've happily learned to love me some Dr. Who and Sherlock... The only problem is that my ears seem to have a problem interpreting the British accent on "TV" (ie. laptop). This means that I sometimes have to resort to reading the Spanish subtitles to figure out what they are saying in English.
Sooo...Hello. My name is Kathryn and sometimes my life is weird. Awesome, but weird. Also, I go by Kathryn now, just in case anyone was wondering about that (otherwise we would have had three Katies here, and that's just too many), but Katie is still fine with me, I kind of miss it sometimes.

School so far has been great. I'm up to fifteen students now (a huge class, I know!).  It's strange just how different two groups of five-year-olds can be. This class is definitely louder and more active, but I'm loving my little ones, they are so much fun! They are a smart little bunch so I am able to do more center work learning and less group teaching, which we all enjoy. I especially like it, since that was my number one goal for my teaching this year-have more centers, and as of last week, I've got about 10 different center activities we can do.  They aren't nicely organized like on all those teacher blogs, but they exist, so I'm happy. It's nice to actually meet a goal.  :)  
We've also done a lot more art activities since these kids LOVE anything that involves paint, glue, markers, crayons... They happily spend all their free time after snack and lunch coloring and copying whatever words they can find on the walls.  Sadly for them, today they finished up the giant bucket of paper I had for them in August. Guess they'll have to do more homework to get some more!
Next week a student teacher from the US is coming to finish out the semester in my classroom. 
I'm excited to get to do for another what my amazing master teacher did for me, but a little nervous about getting to be a mentor teacher.

Painting with vegetables...as you can see we are still learning the "paint the paper, not yourself" lesson.

 

Introducing a whole new class to the song "Aiken Drum"! I'd never heard it before last year, but it's basically my new favorite song. Madeline L. Pott's youtube video pretty much makes it theirs too.

 

 

Last month we had various camps for the students and I got to be co-director for Lower Elementary Camp.  It was basically VBS in two days. Craziness.

The kids had a blast though, and I think the teachers had quite a lot of fun too! I'm so thankful for all that God did in helping us teach our kids to "Tell It!" on the mountain and everywhere.

 

Learning about Elijah and how our God is the one true God!

Crazy teachers have trouble carrying the oh so heavy "stones".

And to think I spend eight hours a day with these people!

Minus me, this is the Pre-K/KG team!

 



 

 

The trip to Uruguay in July was so much fun.  It was actually cold and the hostel showers were mostly hot...such a luxury in the middle of winter! It was a lot of fun just being far away from work and exploring a new town. We did all the touristy stuff, and explore about a billion museums.

One of the coolest parts was going on a tour of their legislative building.  It has seven types of marble in just one room!

 

We also traveled to a few different towns...got lost on a couple buses (because you know, it just isn't an adventure without getting lost on at least one bus...).  The last two days were pretty cold and rainy, but we still had fun and it meant we got to try a special Uruguay treat that people apparently only eat when it's raining. It made for a super yummy treat on a cold, wet night.

The major downside to the chill and wet was that I caught a cold that kicked off a chain of colds I couldn't shake for about ten weeks (my kids kept giving me new ones before I could get well). Oh well, such is life!

 

The giant hand in Uruguay!

Normally it looks like it's scooping out of the sand, but it was crazy windy that day so we gave up on the beach and went for hot chocolate instead.

 

 

 

If you ever go Uruguay, I definitely recommend going to Colonia.  It's absolutely gorgeous and is basically a living history book. The streets are old and most of the building in the old section are original.

A really old building. Apx 300 years. My mind was kind of reeling...

 

 And over here we have a classic old town Colonia corner,

complete with lamp post and hand painted tile street sign.

 

 

We paid our three dollars and climbed to the top of a lighthouse.  The view was gorgeous, well worth the squeezing past the dozens of people on a tiny staircase.

 

We biked up the coast to see an old train, but we were too cheap to pay to get on the real thing, so I had to settle for "riding" a tiny train instead.

 

Being myself I had fun hopping around pretending I was taking pictures of mountains.

As it turns out, if you hop around taking pictures of moss on rocks, random people will think you are some sort of moss scientist and come up to ask if it's a rare kind of moss. 

 It's a little hard to make things up in a different language.

 

 

So, that's my school year so far.  I'm thoroughly enjoying myself and I thank you for all of your prayers! I miss everybody terribly, but frankly...I love Paraguay!

Best road in Montevideo!



 

Day 365...

I have officially lived in Paraguay for one year now! So stinking excited about that...you know, living in another country, teaching, living with awesome people...good times!

 

Happy Fourth of July!

When I first moved here, I had absolutely no clue what to even expect, now I love it here. Really, really love it. Paraguay is a beautiful, warm, amazing country.   In other news, according to my last pay statement I've finished paying off my paperwork fees, so I'm an official permanently permanent resident of Paraguay (always nice to know you have a backup home for the rest of your life...).

Things are done a little differently here sometimes, but that's okay, because I've enjoyed adapting and getting used to new things. I'm sad to miss out on family things, like weddings, but I am glad God sent me here. I've learned so much while I've been here-from 20 ways to use Dulce de Leche (when I tried to list them out I felt a bit like Bubba from Forrest Gump-DdL cake, DdL ice cream, DdL alfajores...),  to which bus NOT to take to the mall, to communicating with children who don't speak English.  It's been a lot of fun and a lot of work, but I honestly love it.

Look, they have John Deer in Paraguay!

I'm loving being a teacher, though I hated being a first year teacher. I am seriously looking foward to this year where I have a little bit more of an idea of what I'm doing!  It's been a crazy year this year, though.  Our school went through reaccredidation (we earned a recommendation for passing, I don't know what the final vote this month was) and we've had camps, and field days, and field trips, and new teachers, and geez it's been fun, and crazy!
Jacqui and I started a Girl Scout Troop. It's the only USA GS troop in the country thankyouverymuch. On the bright side, since we essentially are the OCC (overseas commitee something) we get cool titles like "President" and "Vice-President" and "Secretary" and "Treasurer" (we actually have assigned these titles, mostly for the fun of calling each other by our titles). We could have offical bar pin thingy's and everything! :) We have five little Girl Scouts that had their promise ceremony and got their pins and they are so cute! We love being their Brownie Leaders!

Today, Jacqui and I are flying Uruguay (South America has some really cool sounding countries, doesn't it?). We'll be there for a week. I'm excited, except it's supposed to be pretty cold, at least that's the first thing EVERBODY says when I tell them where we are going! We're excited to get out of Asuncion and properly relax without feeling like we should be doing something productive. We'll get back in town just in time to still have a few days off and then school starts back again. It's supposed to be beautiful there, so I can't wait!

Now, for a little bit of randomness...
1-10 New Country Style
1-year
I've officially been living in Asuncion for 1 whole year!!!

2-apartments
I lived upstairs for several months and then moved downstairs to my current apartment

3-roommates
My first roomate Lydia moved to another apartment, and Hannah just moved in :)

4-seasons (kind of, feels more like two)
Kind of, it felt more like three: cold, kind of hot, really hot, kind of hot...

5-different towns
Aregua, Lambare, Encarnacion, Luque, and Ypacarai (ee-pah-ka-ry)
Although, technically Lambare and Ypacarai were explored at the end of a mis-directed bus journey...We didn't get lost, we were on an adventure!

6-trips to Aregua
Three of those trips for the strawberry festival...don't judge, you'd have gone back too if you'd tasted all the strawberry goodness! I can't wait till September, they are already starting to sell strawberries on the side of the road again!

7-plants
Some are even still alive, and the pineapple plant looks alive, so that counts too, right?

8-new foods (that I can remember):
empanadas-yumminess, corn, chicken, ham and cheese, you name it in a convienent, yummy, little pocket
sopa paraguaya-basically really excellent corn bread
mbeju (bey-shu)-very different, but super yummy!
chipa-any morning that starts with chipa is a good morning, think chewy cheesy bread dounut thing. mmmmm!
chipa guasu-I'm not 100% sure what the difference between this and sopa is, but when the cantina ladies say it's chipa guazu, I just assume they know what they are talking about...
chorizo-fat little sausages in a million different kinds. I even tried blood sausage...it was...different...
milenesa-kind of like chicken fried steak on a sandwhich, or a Chik-fil-A sandwich pounded flat.  Pretty good either way
Cocido-Better than coffee or tea...Love. This. Stuff. Basically you take Terere (a drink made of herbs and leaves and other green stuff) and cook it, then pour it in hot water, steep, add sugar and milk, then seriously enjoy yourself!

9-students
Had eight, lost one, gained another.  Nine very different little personalities that I love dearly!

10-broken dishes
Yeah, I think I need to just stay in this apartment for a while, then I'll only have to replace one set of dishes...


Also, since many people have been asking when I'm coming back to visit, the answer is: not this year. I assume that means next Christmas, but that's a long time from now, and I obviously can't say for sure.  This Christmas I'm going to England with Jacqui to explore her country.  And my daddy's coming over the pond to visit me! We might even go to Wales!!! (how cool would that be?) Since a lot of the teacher this year are either couples or new, I wouldn't really have someone to travel with, and well, Paraguay may be safe, but that doesn't mean the rest of SA is...but I still want to explore somewhere new over the break, so next Christmas it is! In the meantime, I would love to have people visit me here (hint, hint)! It's safe, pretty darn cheap (I can think of at least six towns you can visit for the price of a 50 cent bus ticket) and well awesome! And the people are really nice, so not knowing spanish isn't a huge deal. I'm just saying...

Also, for those of you have asked, if you look at the bottom of the school website, the school address is there (write all three lines, I think?).  Just send it to Asuncion Christian Academy and put my name as "Att: Kathryn Piggott" at the bottom and they will deliver it to my "mailbox" at school. http://aca.edu.py/ . Mail is always fun!

My very first piece of overseas mail!

Speaking of people coming here, ACA got a first grade teacher! Happiness! God answers prayers! But...now we need a 2nd grade teacher since another teacher ended up not being able to come. So if you know anyone interested in teaching a great class of kids (there are about seven of them), and want to move overseas, tell them to try here! I'd be happy to answer any questions anyone has, and point you to the person to ask, if I don't know the answers.  And, you know, ACA needs some more South down here.  There are way too many people from the land of actual snowy winters (ie, the North)! ;) Either way, please keep the school in your prayers.  The school as a whole has done some incredible work these last two years to improve itself, and I know God has big things for it now that we are on the right track.


Either way, here's to One WHOLE Year in South America, and to another one coming on it's heels!

 

Deep Breath...Let it Out...Relax

IT'S OVER!!!
I am officially done with my first year teaching. Yeesh, I was beginning to think it would never end (especially every time someone gleefully posted that their year was over-grrrr). But it's finally here and I can go back to setting my own hours, not arriving at school at 6:40, and gosh, actually enjoying my evenings! It's marvelous...and I can't wait to be back. On the bright side, they have to wash the carpets in my classroom so I CAN'T go back in for at least two weeks. Hurrah!
I got my classroom as set up as possible for next year, furniture wise, because I just couldn't bring myself to leave without doing so. Luckily, some of the furniture was too heavy to move, so I had to leave it (my back is rejoicing). Everything else is shoved in the bathroom, in hopes that it won't look like it did last semester when I got there..

 

As crazy hard and exhausting as my first year was, I am definitely glad I decided to follow God's direction to go into teaching. My little ones are such blessings, and so funny. It's amazing how different all of their personalities are! Even thought they won't be far away in first grade, I'm going to miss them! The Pre-Kinders coming up will certainly keep me busy though.  There are 12 of them and most of them are still working on speaking English, though they can understand it pretty well. They are sweet-hearts, but there are definitely a few that will keep me on my toes!



How to get boys to willing write 100 of something: Tell them that a google (their favorite number) is a 1 with 100 zeroes after it. In about 15 minutes they had written a google three times for fun! :) Smart kids!

 

 

I've had a great last few months.  With holidays and various school breaks, we've had lots of opportunities to explore Asuncion on our days off. For Paraguayan Independence Day there was a whole host of interesting things to do!

 

Paraguay apparently has a Navy (who knew) and we got to tour one of the ships! The one on the water is ship #4 and we got to tour #5. I've now been on a Navy ship for two different countries...which I think is kind of cool!

 

We also finally got around to going inside the Pantheon of Heroes in the Plaza de Heroes. It holds the tombs of various military heroes, as well as a "tomb to the unknown soldier".

 

 

 

 

We also did a little exploring around the river.
This is a picture of part of the "Chacarita" (slums) in Asuncion. It's really crazy to look at, because this poorest part of Asuncion is directly behind some of the government buildings, almost under them. You see well cared for lawns and the police station, then you walk to the edge of the land and look down twenty feet and see the slums.

We couldn't go through this part, but if you look closely there's a sidewalk by the river we walked around to. Jacqui really enjoyed being by the water again. You'd think she'd grown up on an island or something!

 

 

 

 

 On the fourteenth, I celebrated my 24th birthday! Somehow we managed to have enough forethought to buy cupcakes, but not birthday candles, hence the mismatched emergency candles. Not nearly as fun to lick clean...

 

 

 

 At the end of May, I officially passed Level 1 of Spanish and Jacqui and I've started Level 2! I'm quite proud of myself, though I've still got a ways to go, I can definitely tell I've learned a lot! I can now ask for things, hold a basic conversation, and generally understand what people are saying to me.

I'm officially official, and I gots a paper to prove it!

Why yes, I did get 90% on my writing! I'm very proud of myself! :)

 

 

In other news, Jacqui and I have managed to keep not one, but six plants alive for over a month! And like the true little nerds we are, we named them. 

Meet The Doctor, River Song, Donna, Rose, Rory, and Amy!

They live in memory of Bob, Joe, and Rowena who, sadly, succumbed to neglect and thirst. The wimps

 



For now, though, Jacqui and I are enjoying the prospect of five weeks of being left to our own devices.  In July, we are going to hop on a plane and go to Uruguay for a week.  Coming from the US, where hopping on a plane for three hours leaves you in the same country that you started in, I'm quite amused by this idea of being able to travel to another country in such a short amount of time! Jacqui, my European friend who is used to the idea of hopping on a train, or a boat, or a plane for several hours and being in any number of countries doesn't quite understand my fascination.

Even though it will be pretty cold, it will be fun walking down by the beach, exploring the old cities, and generally enjoying the new sights. Apparently, at one beach, there's a giant's hand sticking out of the sand! Also, the hostels are reported to have hot (real hot, not "not cold") showers! So excited!

 

Finally, there will soon be a third in our apartment.  We are getting a new roommate, named Hannah, who is moving to ACA from another school in Asuncion.  She's Irish, so soon I will get to learn even more "Britishisms". We are excited to be getting to live with someone that we already know and like! :)

 

We get to add another flag to our door soon!

The little ones are the GA state flag and the Essex County flag, so Hannah will get her own flag.

 

 

Prayer Requests:

Please pray for the returning teachers as we relax and refocus over our school break and for the new teachers as they prepare to move their lives to a new country and life.

For safety as Jacqui and I travel to Uruguay in a few weeks.

ACA is still looking for a permanent first grade teacher (I can highly recommend the cuties!), so please pray that they would find the person that God has prepared for the position and that her/his transition would be quick and smooth.

Finally, a random advertisement:

If you know someone who is looking for a teaching position and would like to work overseas in a safe, welcoming environment, encourage them to check out ACA! Even if they don't want to come to PY, I highly suggest www.missionteach.org as a way to look for overseas school related jobs around the world. There are so many schools that need teachers, and we are just one of them! It's how I found this job.