This & That

Who would have thought I'd ever write that I was having fun teaching math?? Well, I am. For the past 2 days, I have been helping out in the Standard VI (8th grade) math class, working with those kids who need some extra practice to get the current concepts. We are all working hard to have the students prepared for the second part of their big state test. We've been working this week with various problems involving percent -- simple interest, buying on time, etc. So far, so good for me, but next come ratio and proportion. I may need some tutoring myself! I think what I am most enjoying is the time spent with the kids. This group is really well-behaved, smart and fun.

Thank you for all the prayers for our family at Holy Cross after Gabriela's tragic death. We will honor her life at chapel tomorrow. It has been a difficult time, and our hearts ache, but your support and caring are helping. We hope her sister will be returning to school in the next few days.

Many of you have asked about Destiny. I have this update -- she is out of the hospital, although never clear of congestion. She is living with a lady in Belize City in, from what I can gather, a foster home. She has called her dear adult friends, Cullen and Kath in San Pedro, and seems happy. No word yet on whether she will go to the children's home or remain in foster care. She's been assigned a new social worker so the action has slowed some. At least she is a little healthier and is happy.

Some of you may remember my special friend Vladimir ("Baltimore") who I met the first time I came to Holy Cross. He left yesterday to go to St. Louis (the Shriners take care of him) for more surgery on his feet. He will probably not be back at school this year. He hugged me good-bye on Monday. He's very excited about going -- he can walk better after each time there. I will miss seeing his smile in the Standard III class but am so happy he can have this opportunity. His story is one of the many miracle stories at Holy Cross.

We had another one of the unannounced power outages last night. The electricity went off around 1:30 and stayed off til 5:30. I guess that's not a bad time to be without electricity other than having no fans or AC. I think that's what woke me up -- I realized I was hot. The power went out for short periods of time twice more during the day today. We are frequently reminded of the importance of saving when working on computer.

For almost 2 months, we have been waiting to hear from Bishop Wright about when he would be able to come over for a confirmation service. Yesterday we got a call that he would be coming on May 30 so today we got our classes going in full swing. There were 7 kids who came today for class. There are several others who have already participated in a preparation program but were not confirmed, so we should have quite a nice group.

Today I sent my federal taxes to my mother to send on the IRS (I filed for an extension before I came back from Easter vacation). Filing from Belize is not an easy thing to do. The mail is so incredibly slow that I had planned to use the e-filing. But, at the very last minute I was informed by TurboTax that my return was not "eligible" for e-file. Good grief! I just couldn't send that whole packet off to the IRS from here, having no way to know if it ever arrived there. So, thanks to Mother for being the intermediate stop. Apparently the state of NC has different technology because I was able to e-file the state return. It should not be this difficult to get my own money back.

My neighbor brought over a delicious-looking piece of key lime pie (here, they call it "caye" lime pie) . I think it's time to go enjoy it.