Back to the Dentist!!

On the drive to the dentist, Vanessa was playing with a big mouth of teeth that one of my supporters gave me...Thank you Andrea :) By the way, Dentist Diane was SO excited about the teeth!

4 dentist visits later and Vanessa is now finally done with dental work. At least until her next check up.
Joan is just beginning her trips to the dentist. She had really bad tarter and calcium build up and many, many cavities. Dentist Diane only had time to clean her teeth, but that took about an hour.

I'm Back!!

Today I subbed at CCS. It was great to be back and see the kids. But I couldn't stay all day because I was taking girls to the dentist. Which makes me so happy to get those kids back to the dentist! They need it!

Below is the 2nd grade class. They are such a fun class. Such cute kids :)
We had a big kid join us part way through class...can you find him? :)Rhea Mae did a good job helping him learn :)On the right is Jerus and Jan Andrei...great boys!

Quotes From Art Class

Last week was a busy week. I substituted at Rylee's school for elementary art Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.

A few quotes from the week:

From a 1st grader to his friend, "You just need to give it to God, just give it to God. If you have a hurt, give it to God."

A 2nd grade girl asked me, "Your name is Mrs. Cordova? Are you French?"

A Korean 3rd grader tells me, "Luke isn't here today. He is celebrating a holiday from his culture." This happened to be Thanksgiving day.

A 4th grader told the girl next to him, "You need to practice what you preach. Just practice what you preach." The girl said, "I don't even know what that means!" He said, "Well you need to just practice what you preach!"

Happy Birthday Chris

Chris' birthday was November 16th. For his birthday, we had blueberry bread for breakfast, and fish, bacon, and potatoes for an early dinner. Then we headed to the mall for the movie Mega Mind. After the movie, we went to the toy store and Chris got a little Spiderman figure that he keeps on his bed stand. When we got home, we watched Batman Begins and ate cherry cheesecake. It was a fun filled day! My birthday gift to Chris was a night out. We ate at a wonderful buffet at a nice hotel!
Rylee's gift to Chris was this mug that says, "Any man can be a father, but it takes someone special to be a dad." She was really excited about it and Chris really liked it too :)

Good Bye Angel

Another little girl has left our children's home. Beautiful Angel! Angel is old enough to understand she is gaining a new mommy and daddy and was excited, however being the age she is, 4, she is too young to fully understand. She was a little afraid when she was told she would leave with her parents by herself. Unlike Michael, when it was time to go, she wasn't ready. She spent a long time with our social workers right before she left and they were trying to explain to her what was going on. Therefore, I was not able to get very many pictures. I only snapped a few as they came out of the house and got in the car. One of our social workers drove away with them to help Angel with the transition.

Happy Early Birthday

Chris' birthday is next Tuesday, November 16th. So, Chris took the small boys from the Children's Home out this Tuesday to celebrate. He normally spends Tuesday afternoon with the boys. They went to Jollibee and got ice cream sundays. They had a great time!
Jollibee is a favorite for kids here like McDonalds is a favorite for kids in the states.

Yucky Water

When Rylee and I first moved to the PI, one of the many things we were warned about was the water. People said, "Do NOT drink it from the tap and actually, don't even put it in your mouth!" I understood that it was dirty, but I don't think I fully comprehended how dirty it was until we started using a filter. We have been changing our filter every 2 weeks, but we have now decided to start changing it every week. Supposedly, our buildings water has been switched to Manila water as opposed to well water, and it is suppose to get better. We'll keep you posted on the progress!And to think, we wash our dishes with this water! Good thing we at least have a filter!
The white filter is what the dark brown filter looked like 2 weeks prior.Rylee likes to watch Chris change the filter. Lily does too!

Art Display

This last weekend, Rylee's school put on a festival. There was shopping, games, bands marching, choirs singing, art displays, drama plays, snow cones, cotton candy, food, coffee, and more!

I worked at the coffee shop for an hour and Rylee had many items in the art display.

She made this self portrait. I think it looks just like her :)

Rylee made this elephant out of clay. So cute!!

A cute little teddy bear of water color...

This was a group project that is 3-dimensional. It was very cool!

Different Nationalities

On Friday, I was a substitute teacher again at Rylee's school. I substituted for an ELL class, English Language Learning. It is a class for students with English as there 2nd or 3rd language. It was a lot of fun! I was there for 2 class periods, 7th and 8th grade. There was a mixed of nationalities represented. Mostly Korean, but one student was Vietnamese and another was Persian. It was fun to watch them interact with each other using English and there own language, and how all 7th and 8th graders seem to act and joke around the same :)

Halloween

This Halloween was a lot of fun. Rylee and Kameron decided to dress up as pregnant moms with babies. The girls took all of the little kids we know in the condos trick-or-treating. It was so much fun to see all the kids dressed up!
Seth the pumpkin....
Decon as batman...
We tried to find one of Lily's dresses, but coudn't. So we put her hair in a ponytail...
We put our jack-o-lanterns right inside the door of our place and turned off all the lights so it looked like outside in our place :)
The kids getting candy from Uncle Chris...
The kids trick-or-treating at our neighbors...

Rylee the baby-sitter!

Rylee has been asked to babysit for a couple of different families in the condos. She loves it! Rylee is gifted when it comes to kids. There is one family that lives 2 doors down the hall from us and Rylee has babysat for them a couple of times. Luca is 8, Marco is 3, and Avi is 1. They are the cutest kids! Since they live so close to us, Rylee has brought the kids over to our place to play for a little bit while she's baby sitting. Marco told his mom he likes to wrestle with Uncle Chris and asked when he could come back to our house to play :)

It's Fall

Since we can't go to Fall, Rylee and I decided to bring Fall to us! We gathered a couple of sticks from the tree right outside of our apartment, made our own fall colored leaves, glued them to the sticks and...we have a Fall tree!