4 months

   Well today I have been here for 4 months...I can't believe how fast the time has gone!!  This has been 4 months of stretching in ways I wasn't really prepared for, but I am glad of it even though it has been very painful at times. I think back to my first few days of teaching and how scared I was, not to mention the fact that I was ready to throw some of my 4th grade boys in East Lake. That has changed so much in the past few months. I still have a few 4th grade boys that can be a handful but it is very different now. I am more confident in my teaching and I really can't go anywhere without hearing my name from one of my kiddos. I have one little boy (whom I cannot remember his name right now) he is so cute he is in Class 2 Grade 3 I have him on Thursdays when he sees me he lights up like the 4th of July and shouts my name until I wave and say hello. It is absolutely impossible for me to have an outright bad day when my kids are around. I can be having the worst day and I will get smothered and I mean smothered in hugs from my students. I could be having a bad day where I don't really feel very great about myself and a little girl will come up to me (or a 4th grade boy...there are at least 3 of them that like me) and tell me 'you are so beautiful'. 

   Moments like this are like hugs sent straight from the Father, he uses my kids everyday to encourage me and let me know that my life is important if for no other reason then to show these kids that there is someone in their corner...they are loved and very special. In the darkest of moments in my life when I feel like I just want to give up or that nothing I am doing really matters I see their little smiles in my mind and I look at my wall of art from my kiddos and everything changes. I think we underestimate the power kids have, they get the important things more then adults do. Somewhere in the growing up process we forget the simple truths and replace them with busy emptiness. My kids remind me to keep it simple. They believe without much proof and they love freely, maybe that's why  JC told us to be like little children...they get it and just believe they don't fight the truth  they just go with it. They have taught me more in 4 months then I think I have taught them. 

   I am going to miss my hugs from my students over the summer...I knew I might get attached but I didn't think it would be this bad. Who knew a bunch of kids in Wuhan, Hubei, PRC would capture my heart. I found out today that I do have to work on Christmas Day but I don't mind I am spending it with my kiddos they are my family in  crazy way and I look forward to spending it with them...plus that is the day of our Christmas Show. I get to preform a poem in Chinese (yes I'm nervous but I am practicing like crazy and getting better!) If my kids can learn English I can learn Chinese, besides the more I learn it and can talk to them in Chinese the cooler they think I am. They like to say something to me in Chinese and I do my best to answer them if I can you would think I just gave them the moon, its the cutest thing! I am glad I got on that plane as nervous as I was if for nothing else then the simple love of my students it is like a soothing balm on the cuts and bruises of my heart. They have eternally changed me and forever taken a piece of my heart with them.