Well, school is winding down, and I think I am more excited for summer break now then I ever was in school. Grades are due in Thursday, and Friday is the last day of school. Graduation is on Saturday. The seniors have had this week off from school, and truthfully so have a lot of other classes, because teachers have given them their finals and then decided not to start a new topic. I'm still teaching- I got to much less this semester then I did last semester teaching the same class because of the strike. So I'm trying to figure out what is most important and cram it in. These last couple of days are all about drugs- alcohol, marijuana, tobacco, cocaine- and my strategy is to just scare the heck out of them. Unfortunately, girls are much harder to scare then boys. I think the girls are into less stuff then the boys are, though, so that's good.
It's mango season now, and all the mango trees look like they've been decorated for Christmas. Mangos come in many different shapes and colors. I've seen small green ones, long yellow ones, pink and gold ones (my favorite) and deep purple ones, which grow in our back yard. The fruits hang from a long stem, about a foot long, and the trees look very festive. I just learned the hard way to avoid the sap from mangos- it gives you a nasty blistery rash like poison ivy. Some splattered on me when I was picking a mango, and blisters showed up the next day!

Yesterday myself and three other teachers traveled to a school about 15 minutes away to hold a panel discussion on pro-life topics: sex, chastity, abortion, contraception, etc. It was both discouraging and encouraging. It was discouraging because it was obvious that some if not most of the kids were not interested in what we had to say, and didn't agree with us. It was encouraging because I realized with the contrast between this school and our kids that our kids are pretty solid morally. Our students will ask tricky questions, but they know usually what the answer is because they know what is right and what is wrong. These kids didn't have that moral base. It was a great opportunity, though, and I wished I had more time, because they really needed someone to answer their questions. We got questions across the board- What happens in abortions, why is sex before marriage wrong, is contraception bad, why doesn't the Church allow divorce. One of the most encouraging questions came after I explained that condoms don't prevent the majority of sexually transmitted diseases. A boy raised his hand, and said, "then why do they tell us to use them?" I figure I can only take the little time that I have, and plant doubt about the culture of death in their minds, so they will begin asking these sort of questions.
An exciting note- Nancy, our secretary who lives across the street from us had her baby a few days ago. His name is Ethan Elijah (from the song "Days of Elijah"!!!) and I got to hold him today. He is soooo cute.
And, Sarah, you'll love this-- we've been doing Lamb's Lord's days pretty regularly down here, and one of the teachers fell in love with the "My Beloved" song. So she taught it to her class of girls, and they sung it at Mass today!

Yesterday at about noon, there was an interesting phenomenon here- the sun had a rainbow ring all the way around it. I've never seen anything like it, but it scared some of the students. There are tons of superstitions here, and they come up all the time in biology. One of the biggest beliefs is that any unusual solar or lunar activities- eclipses, etc., cause birth defects. This belief is firmly held, and no matter what I tell my students, they all agree that pregnant woman should never go out in an eclipse. I'm covering pregnancy now with my girls, and growth and development of the baby, and I had to spend 15 minutes in class talking about the "evil eye." People here believe that if a baby gets the evil eye, he will get a fever and get sick. Now, I had to proceed carefully with this one, because the priests have told us that there is legitimate black magic that goes on here. These girls, though, believe that if anyone walking down the street looks funny at the baby, it is the evil eye. They put little bracelets on the baby, and bath them in oatmeal and put a raw egg on their head to protect them from the evil eye. My students tend to separate what they learn in school from what they hear outside school, and it can be frustrating for me. I usually sit them down, and quiz them on what they know about the human body from class-- ok, what causes you to get a fever and get sick, and they all answer bacteria and viruses. Then I ask them to think about whether the baby might have an infection, and not the evil eye. I think I get through to some of them- you have to start somewhere!