Waplewo

Welcome to Waplewo. It's a really little village near us and we've been invited to come teach three different classes of English once a week. Amber and Patsy are teaching the younger kids, Bryan and I are teaching the teens, and Alethea and Lydia are teaching the adults. So far, it's been a great experience and there has been a really great turnout each week. In fact, the first two weeks, Amber and Patsy had kids sitting on the floor! As for myself, I'm in a very unfamiliar position in Waplewo. First of all, I'm not working with Amber, which is a little strange since we've worked together on nearly everything since roughly January of 07! Also, I'm teaching teenagers, which is a HUGE stretch for me! I'm totally not used to teaching teens and definitely having to learn how to relate to them and how to teach them without cheezy songs and games that I'm used to using with kids. Thankfully, I left the apron* I used to wear when I was teaching school, back in Ohio. Now, I'm just 90% un-cool with youth, as opposed to 100% while wearing the apron.

(*in defense of the apron-wearing...it was awesome. It had three large pockets where I could stuff pencils, erasers, markers, chalk...you name it. AND, it was a defensive shield against a wide assortment of bodily fluids and dirt)

I don't know if you can read the buletin board in the back of the room, but I can't either. I think it's a German classroom.

I've included some shots of one of the elementary classrooms, for all of my teacher relatives. I thought you might like to see the inside of a Polish school. We've been in several schools here, and I think this one, in this tiny village, is one of the nicest!

Another shot of the classroom (and Amber and Patsy--for the record, I did not abandon my own class to run around snapping photos. Marcin used my camera and got some great shots of everyone in action). This shot was taken from the doorway. Pretty small, huh?

And this photo was taken from the very front of the room. Yup, that's the back wall you can see. I don't know how many kids are in this room during the school day, but yikes! It's close quarters for sure!

Please continue to pray for the people of Waplewo. As I mentioned, we've only been heading out to this village for three weeks now, so it's all kind of new to us. However, Marcin has had some great opportunities to talk with some of the teachers and the director of the school. Please pray for more opportunities to meet and build relationships with the people here. And please pray for me as I work with Bryan to teach the youth. Please pray for relationships to grow, for wisdom in how to plan and teach, and for some small degree of coolness with them. I mean, God can do anything, right?!?!