Kelly's Story

by Kelly:
Let me just start off with things are good :) We went to church with some friends on Sunday, and met a pastor who invited us over for lunchand who we became fast friends with. He was put off at first by ourhabits, but after we got talking about our church, and our mission,and our work in Brasil, it was like we were family. The friends thatbrought us to church are also awesome – the man and his wife are bothpastors, and they have been friends of ours for 4 years. They have been our biggest help since we've been here. We also talked about an area where we can possibly do some ministry, which is of course ourmain objective. So God is good and we are happy to be able to reportsome good news about that!
Now on to one of our secondary objectives – getting a job :). I've got a job! I am working for a man who is starting up his own English school… small classes, grouped by age and ability, and our target at the moment is 4 year olds :) No more than 6 kids per class. This week I am working for this guy helping research the competition and trying to help set up this program. So yesterday was my first day of work, and I decided to use Excel to present my research on the competition on a number of categories. So I load Microsoft Excel, butI don't recognize the language at all. Turns out, its in French. I tell my boss, and we can't figure out how to change the language. So I'm learning to cut and paste, insert rows and columns, and format cells all in French :) (on a British computer, by the way, because he is British, so instead of the # symbol over the 3 on the keyboard,there is the pound sign (£) which I just searched for for 3 min to find on this computer. So again, yesterday, I'm at my first day at work meeting with 2 reps from Oxford University Press looking over possible textbooks to buy to use for our classes, (for the meeting by the way, my boss didn't have enough chairs so we sat on the floor) and one of the reps gets a call that this high school that needs a sub for an English class. My boss says, "Hey, why don't you do it?" so before I know it, I'm getting up at 5:30am today to get ready to do my first paid subbing job EVER – in Brasilia. So I get there, and they let me in – no one checks my passport, no one checks my credentials, and no one seems to care that I am traveling on a tourist visa (nice school, by the way!). So before I know it, I am thrown into 4 classes, 4 different levels, with about 15 seconds preptime before each class. It was hilarious :) But it was a good day, after I happily returned to my French Microsoft Excel this afternoon and realized that I seriously just subbed in Brasil. Crazy. I'm scheduled to go back Thursday. So work is going ok, though definitely a little on the adventuresome side.