Day 56

Gaby, Myself, and Saul

I spent almost the entire school day today with the kids. I had a great time. I led chapel this morning and then a boys devotion after that. I eat breakfast then helped in Betsy's classroom until about 11 then I put together a video that Betsy will be showing to her church in October. After Lunch we practiced the bells with the older kids then we all went to badminton. It really seems like the kids are enjoying badminton more and more. It is quite a bit more relaxed now that we know that we won't be competing for a while. Betsy's church is having a prayer vigil tonight. They will all be up until 12 midnight praying together, I don't speak Spanish well enough to pull that off, and Leo is in a youth group bible study which I am to old for. So I am home alone. Tomorrow morning Betsy, Leo and I are taking a boat out to a very small island called Vieques. I don't really know what we will be doing there but I'm sure it will be fun. Betsy and Leo are pretty excited. I guess you'll find out in tomorrows post. Until then.

Day 55

Larry

So there are two little girls dorming at the school, and their parents as I mentioned yesterday. Well their dad is a champ. He has been here all of 4 days and he is close to being finished ripping all the vines down off the fence that surrounds the school, and he cut the grass in the field were the trees are. This is absolutely impossible to do with a lawn mower because the holes are deeper than the mud and have been filled with water for a week. Seriously you can be walking out there and the next thing you know the better half of your right leg is underwater. Well anyway he went back there with a edger, trimmer, weed whacker or whatever people call them where you happen to be from, and just went at the grass with it. It looks amazing down there. You can almost see the holes when you fall into them. Betsy said that one time they had someone come with a dump truck and they filled all the holes with gravel and dirt and it only lasted three years. How does gravel just disappear? The answer is simple, a tribe of little people who dig holes! Hole people! So anyway this guy has shown me how this school is supposed to look so all I need to do now is maintain. It'll be a full time job, but someone's gotta do it. So the picture is of one of six lizards that were just hanging out on me in the field today. It was crazy, I cut down this tree and after we cleaned it all up there were like eight lizards on the stump catching bugs. I wanted to catch one so I went for one of the bigger ones and it just jumped off the stump and onto my arm. I continued to do this until I had almost all of them on me. I don't know maybe lizards just like me. They seemed pretty content to just stay on my and it the little bugs that were flying around. I eventually had to shew them off of me and the biggest one bit my finger. Why is it that I can catch all the snake food in Puerto Rico but I can't catch a snake? It would be so well fed, really if the snakes were smart they would find me. Sounds like a pretty nice life really. Bumper sticker: JESUS SAVES, he passes to Noah, who shoots and SCORES!! Be alert, the world needs more lerts.

Day 54

54 days on this patch of sand in the middle of the ocean, that's a year and 13 days in dog years. I put the chainsaw to work again today. I went down to the lower field and cut down a tree that was leaning over the grass and blocking the lawn mower. I was so covered in mud! I wish I had a picture. Just before I had a heat stroke Betsy talked me into procrastinating and cleaning up the rest of the tree tomorrow. I've always been into surviving so I gave in. We took the girls that are staying at the school and their parents, also staying with us, to the beach. Betsy, Leo and I went snorkeling. We saw the biggest crab I have ever seen. This thing was hug. I tried to catch it but it got all upset, crabs can be a little edgy, and he jumped off the coral and sank to the bottom. I'm so mad I didn't just grab him when I had the chance. I could have had fresh crab for dinner tonight. I will always remember this as the day I almost caught captain jack crab. I expected better from me. We will meet again captain crab. After the beach I swallowed my regrets and went to church with Betsy and Elizabeth. Wednesday night church we are learning about revelations, and if you think that book is confusing in your first language it gets exponentially worse in your second and third. I understood the message for the most part so that's what counts. So I mentioned that Leo and I had a bet about quitting caffeine. Well I originally thought that I was quitting caffeine and he was quitting soda, but it turns out all I have to quit is Monsters. He says that I can have all the caffeine I want because that wasn't the challenge. Whatever sounds good to me. I don't have a monster(its an energy drink) addiction I have a caffeine addiction. So that should be easy enough. I don't like bumper stickers but if you must get one at least make it a good one, here are some ideas.
"Consciousness: That annoying time between naps"
"Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math"
"I love animals, they taste great"
"Make it idiot proof and someone will make a better idiot"
"Eschew obfuscation"
"Meat is murder... tasty tasty murder"

Day 53

School was very close to being cancelled this morning because of the rain but it stopped before to long and everyone came to school. The green van that I was driving before that overheated and died and was going to need a new engine is fixed! And at a price much lower than we could have expected, awesome. I had pizza for dinner. I have always loved pizza. I'm going to the deaf church again on Sunday, I'm excited. Maybe I can get other people to go with. Today I punished Saul and he didn't freak out! I'm so proud of him. Lets pray he continues down the road of progression.  I'm getting better at Othello and strangely enough I enjoy it more now that I usually win. So in fact I don't hate games, I just hate losing. Easy enough problem to fix, just don't lose. "Failures are expected by losers, ignored by winners"-Joe Gibbs
I won a game of Othello today that ended 54 to 5. That makes sense to 2 of you. I'm sure you both feel special. Betsy's mom Ruth sent me some quotes that I like, here are a few. I don't know who came up with them.
"God doesn't call the qualified, he qualifies the called."
"Some minds are like concrete, thoroughly mixed up and permanently set."
"The good Lord didn't create anything without a purpose, but mosquitoes come close."

Day 52

It has been raining on and off all day so I couldn't mow. At about 6pm the rain picked up and it has been coming down hard ever since then. Kioney, Saul and Gaby didn't come to school today because there grandmother's car broke down, so Jen will be picking them up in the morning tomorrow. Day 1 of no caffeine, I was so tired this morning that I took a nap like an hour after I woke up, pathetic. I so excited for tomorrow, I get to withdrawal off caffeine. Anyway if it rains like this all night we wont have school. I forgot to put the aquarium out until the almost 7pm and I'm sure we got an inch of rain in the hour before alone. The lightning has been great, we had thunder today that was hurting my ears, very cool. I will post the rainfall tomorrow along with the updates on my uphill battle against caffeine, that is unless I get my own HBO special by then, "Chris Tingley, overcoming addiction". Ok I know its just caffeine and I may seem a little over dramatic but when you drink the stuff everyday your body gets used to having it. I'm so glad there weren't any energy drinks at the store today, Leo had plans to buy my favorite one and put it in the fridge to try to get me to break and drink it. Something interesting; Caffeine is found in varying quantities in the seeds, leaves, and fruit of some plants where it acts as a natural pesticide that paralyzes and kills certain insects feeding on the plant.

Day 51

Today I peered around the corner into the deaf world. The first hearing person I talked with today was Tess at 9pm. So this morning me and Leo went to his church. Everything is in sign language which I can understand well enough but it takes every bit of my energy to focus and I was signing all day. After church there was a baby shower for a brand new baby girl. I have never in my life been to a baby shower and today I figured out why. First of all the entire room was pink. All I had to look forward to was the food and someone said that there would be games. In a room full of girls who looked like they didn't care so much about winning a game I thought I had a shot. So the only game that I could participate in was guess how many M&Ms are in the baby bottle. Of coarse I won. If that's a surprise to you you don't know me very well, and for those of you still wondering, 135. Guess what my prize was, other than the sweet smell of victory, I got a bar of soap, that's pink and it says "its a girl" on it. I felt bad about ruining there friendly game after that. So after the shower we went back to Leo's dad's house. There I got to drive Leo's car for the first time! It has a manual transmission, my favorite. Very fun I missed driving stick. Then I got to ride his scooter, its basically a Vespa but it is still very fun. He is hoping to have it moved to the school as soon as possible. His dad doesn't want him to drive it on the highways for obvious reasons. Then we met Leo's grandparents who don't speak English, or Sign Language. So that was an opportunity to use a little Spanish. They seem like very nice people though. Leo and his dad actually went into the other room and left me alone with his grandparents for like ten minutes and I didn't even freak out. I think I was just in language shock. After all of this we all went to Sizzler. Which is nothing like the Sizzler in America. Its actually a buffet and Leo and I had an ice cream eating contest. It was a tie so we both lost. My day of Sign Language finally came to an end at about 9pm. Such a fun day but I am so tired! I will be brain dead tomorrow, and Leo talked me into quitting caffeine for a couple of weeks starting tomorrow. What have I done. LaurieTeel mentioned that I no longer do the quote of the day, she thinks that this is because of laziness.  Well LaurieTeel this ones for you. "True friendship is like wetting your pants, everyone else can see it but only you can feel its true warmth."-Robert Bloch