Gonna find out who's naughty or nice

I'm not gonna lie...this week has been a test of my patience. It started out great, with a gorgeous hike along the eastern coast of the island where we had to maneuver our way through the tides and scale the rocks a bit...quite an adventure! But then the same day I was cussed out by an 8-year old. Hmmm. Then the next day I had about 15 kids all to myself at one of my programs and just barely managed to keep them from killing one another. Don't get me wrong. I love kids. I just don't have to like them this week. Especially not when the approaching Christmas break is turning them into little devils.

I almost got to star in a children's Christmas play though! My friend Jordan was directing and his lead actress didn't show up so I was on stage and ready to fill in, but of course she had to arrive at the last minute and steal my thunder. Oh well, it turned out to be really funny even without my help, and got all of us volunteers into the spirit of Christmas. It makes me miss my sisters' plays back home, with them waving to us from the stage.

The weekend made up for the rough days. I took my Limes Program kids to Grand Anse Beach for the day and we had a blast! Usually the water is dead calm since we're on the Caribbean side, but in December it gets really choppy so the kids were thrilled with the waves. (Surprisingly, many people in the Caribbean don't know how to swim so I'm slowly trying to teach them water safety and basic strokes.) I was a bit hesitant to let them in too deep since we had a couple close calls with sneaker waves, but those kids were so brave, even after they got knocked over a couple times. I was very impressed with their resilience. Now for my resilience...