I love Rice Krispies!

So recently I have seen some very exciting rice Krispy treat recipes on Pinterest, so I decided to make some other than the plain old regular kind (although its hard to improve on the original). I started by following the traditional recipe from www.ricekrispies.com. I should note that I used the peanut butter variation. Then once I had those in the pan cooling I saw some white chocolate chips and thought, "oh yeah those will make these MAGICAL!" So I had Kat melt them in a microwave safe bowl for 1 minute then in 30 second intervals until it was all melty, creamy, and amazing. That's when you pour the chocolate on top and let it set. By this time you are left with what can only be called awesomeness in Krispy treat form.

What I Learned This Week:

How much is a person worth?  We all want to know we are worth something to someone, right?  What if you found out you are only worth $3?  I recently learned that in Thailand there are "karaoke bars" where you can buy a girl for an hour.  When you pay your receipt will say the following: beer $4, food $5, girl $3.  Does anyone else find it disturbing that a person is considered to be worth less than a beer?  These girls are seen as property, not people.
This past Monday I went to a viewing of Nefarious: Merchant of Souls.  This documentary was all about modern day slavery in the form of human trafficking.  Going into the viewing I had no idea what to expect but I left so much more aware than I every thought I would be.  I learned about various types of slavery (prostitution) and was shocked to learn that sometimes it is done from a place of wanting to honor parents by prostituting to make money and done with parental compliance. 
Another shocking new knowledge was what I learned about some Eastern European countries with high numbers of orphans.  Traffickers often wait for girls to age out of the orphanages and then either sweet talk them into leaving under the pretense of a job in a shop or they will just abduct the girl.  What these girls then go through is heart breaking.  They are literally beaten and "broken in" until they are both physically and mentally broken.  The treatment of these women is something unimaginable and happens all around the world, including here. 
Here are some facts that I learned Monday: 27 million people are enslaved around the world (Free the Slaves by Kevin Bales), trafficking is a $32 billion a year industry (United Nations), and the average entry into commercial trafficking in America is 13 years old (US Department of Justice).

There are several organizations that are working diligently to fight trafficking so I thought I'd share a few links (these are some of the more well known organizations but there are a lot of others out there):

www.a21campaign.org

http://exoduscry.com/about/modern-day-slavery/

www.ijm.org

www.humantrafficking.org

www.endhumantrafficking.org

Road Trippin'

This past weekend some friends and I road tripped up to Kentucky to visit our friend Gloria.  Gloria is awesome!  She has been working with some people from her church for the past 2 years or so to start a coffee shop and teen center for their town.  The coffee shop is up and running, and making some bawlin' drinks, and the teen center will be open around Christmas.  One of the best parts of the trip was getting to surprise her by bringing an extra member of the crew.  Gotta love a good surprise! :)



One of my personal favorite parts of the trip was going to Keeneland Race Tracks. I had not been to a horse race before and I'll just sum it all up by saying it was a memorable experience.  Although next time I go I will be sure to drink a lot more water because I learned that there is a lot of standing at these events.

Basically, below there are going to be a lot of pictures of horses.  I got a slight trigger happy with my camera and, well, it was kind of like I was afraid I would never be able to see a horse again because I took more pictures of horses than anything else this weekend.  Can you tell I was raised in the city?

 

(Had to throw in one of the John Deere that pulled the gate since the day before I got to Kentucky my entire school went to Farm Day at the high school).





Someday I Might Be Like Martha Stewart....

Hi my name is Jessica and I am addicted to Pinterest.  Is there a support group for that?  It seems like there should be, we can meet at my house and do crafts while we discuss our addiction.  A side effect of this addiction is that I have started to look around my house and see it as an endless parade of possible projects.  If you know me that probably has you ready to come over here with popcorn to watch because you know there will be some craziness involved in figuring out how to accomplish any kind of craft. 

Since up until now I have only been brave enough to try Pinterest ideas that can be applied to my classroom I decided to try my hand at restyling a piece of furniture.  Enter unsuspecting side table.

After I moved into my new place a few months ago a very sweet friend of mine helped me out by giving me this side table (a side table that I'm hoping she does not mind that I have now used as my learning experience so hopefully it isn't too bad for my first shot).  Yes, I did paint it inside and yes I do know that was probably not the best option but when you live in an apartment sometimes you gotta do whatcha gotta do. :)

Well, here is the adventurous part.  This side table is laminate with a shiny finish so I should have used a primer.  Guess what.  . I used something different! My Grandma'am was in town and she told me a trick she uses that she learned somewhere on the Internet.  I bought some paint and she mixed in baking soda.  Yes, that's all, baking soda!!! At this point I wish I could say I was a believer but I was less than cooperative thinking that this is the craziest thing I had ever heard.  I mean baking soda? I even went as far as to buy the primer because I thought I had to have misunderstood her. Well, she apparently knows how to research because it worked.    
 

 

This is only part way through the process but the paint was sticking! I was in complete shock.  It took about 2 coats but the baking soda not only makes it stick to the wood it also makes the paint super thick!  After it dried and I examined it to make sure all the wood parts were covered I just went over it with a decent amount of clear coat (that's a really important step otherwise the paint can peel off down the road).  I know it may not be as amazing as a lot of the stuff on Pinterest but I have to say I am rather pleased with how it turned out. 

 

 



Ready or Not...Here They Come

Alright I guess I should start by sharing that this is not an education blog.  It will probably have a ton of education stuff but only because I teach and it kind of consumes my life because I think about it all day long and I stalk ideas on pinterest.

Today was my last day working in my classroom before official start back for teachers which is, oh ya know, tomorrow.  Today I brought in another of my friends as a recruit to help me finish up all my last minute chaos.  Have I mentioned how much I appreciate all the help I got!  Typically I start working in my classroom several weeks before school starts back but since our school was having some renovations I wasn't able to get in my room until last Thursday.

Anyway, today was mostly finishing touches which meant there was a little down time to play around (which you can probably tell from the picture). 

We got all my desks arranged, grade level materials sorted (for 8 teachers), worked on the kids back to school gifts, and played a rousing round of which student desk will be the same size as all the other desks.  That may not sound like an actual activity but I made about 4 trips to the storage room because I kept having Goldilocks and the Three Bear moments: this desk is too short, this desk is too tall, this desk is wobbly, this desk is just right.

Let's back track and revisit my back to school gift for my students:















You are probably wondering what these are.  Well, these little balls of awesomeness are light up bouncy balls.  My mom found these somewhere last year (I have absolutely no idea where but good money is on WalMart).  Anyway, I decided to hang on to them for this year so that my class can "Bounce Into a Bright Year".

 

After working hard the past few days I felt I deserved one of my favorite rewards for dinner: Barbeque Chicken Personal Pizza....oh, and I decided to be nice share with my helper :)

Extreme Makeover: Classroom Edition

Yep, it's true, I have a lot of stuff.  I mean tons.  So when my friends offered to help me set up my classroom I decided not to share that minor fun fact with them.  This means that when they walked into my classroom they were met with a mountain of first grade fabulousness.

Why yes that is all my stuff and sadly this is after we started working.  Believe it or not it did look WAAAAY worse when we started (for my own personal dignity I did not document that and if I had I more than likely would not share it with the world via the Internet.  It was a mountain of stuff that would have the producers of Hoarders sign me up for the next episode).

Because my friends are pretty much the most amazing people every they attacked my chaos with as much excitement as they could muster.

I mean, really, look at that face.  Don't you just love how excited she is that she got to vacuum my room about 20 times!  That's not even the greatest thing she did.  She cleaned ALL of my computers and helped me with some items that have been on my to-do list for about, oh I'd say 4 years.

Because I'm really good at bossing people around I sent another of my amazing helpers to assemble my outside hallway display.  I documented her progress because well she just looked so official with the ladder and the glue gun is now her best friend :) If you're ever on Craft Wars this is a girl you want on your team, she's awesome!

Didn't she do just a fantastic job! I was so excited with how it turned out because we ventured far from my original plan and it turned out better than I anticipated!

I'm thankful she's such a trooper cause I think she got some of the more irritating jobs.  I don't think she even knows how much it helped me that she was willing to do them though!

So the next few pictures are basically just a couple pictures of what was accomplished in my classroom over the past few days. What you are about to see is (quick math calculation: 9 hours Thursday + 9.5 hours Friday + 9 hours today = 27.5 hours) 27.5 hours worth of work.  I sure hope my recruit for Monday is ready for the final push cause teachers start back Tuesday :)

Hakuna Matata

To begin I am so incredibly thankful that my groups awesome driver was okay with the fact that the entire safari I referenced animals by their name in The Lion King and other kid movies.

Let me show you a fewanimals  that we saw:
First up Nala (the Swahili word for lion in Simba but since she was a lioness she will forever be Nala)

 She walked in front of our van with an attitude of, "oh, I'm sorry, was that where you were driving" and believe me no one in our van was going to argue with her.  As far as we were concerned we got in her way and we would move when she was ready for us to move.

That white part in the corner, yep that's our vehicle.  That's how close we were to this lion who looked at us with an air of "fine take my picture but you are boring".  (She was kind enough to allow us to humor her with our presence until she deemed us unworthy and left with her friend whom I did not get pictures of.)

Next we had an ostrich (I couldn't think of any well known ostrich characters so we will just say this is Road Runner's cousin or something like that).

I kept waiting on it to get scared and stick its head in the ground or something but my group must have really not been intimidating because it just meandered around like we were invisible.

Then, of course we saw several Melman's (Madagascar movie character for anyone without kids). We saw tons of giraffes and zebras.

 Look, isn't he cute....at least I think it's a he....but really what does it matter it's not like the giraffe is ever going to read this....so as of now it's a he.

Ahhh, the amazing zebra.  These were probably some of the most fun to see just because of their color and because they reminded me of the Jersey Shore cast....make your own opinion about that but yes I watch and I am not ashamed.

In the above picture if you look really close you can see the zebra walk in straight lines, naturally.  I never once saw or heard a teacher zebra having to remind them that walking in a straight line is necessary for survival.  This will be shared with my students this year.

I'm not sure what these birds are, I think I was told that they are called Secretary birds.  Regardless every bird I saw was promptly named Zazu.  Thank you Disney for giving me names for all safari animals whether they are correct or not is beside the point. 

The last picture is of a water buffalo.  Don't you want to wake up next to this face every morning.  Handsome isn't he ladies.  Yes, I am aware that this is another instance where the animal could be a girl but I'm defaulting that all of the animals are boys except for the lionesses.

Well that's all I've got. I hope you enjoyed this random glance at safari!

Jesus Loves The Little Children

1) This blog post is not being written using my iPhone which means that there should be less mistakes than in previous posts.

2) Today's post is going to share about Mathare Child Development Center (M.C.D.C) in Nairobi, Kenya. 

Their students are all street children who are from the slums.  The school provides the children an education and several other life enhancing programs (programs to teach responisbility, rehabilitation, use of technology, health education, and vocational skills). 

There is no way that I could write about this school, what they do, where the kids live, and give you an accuarate understanding of what it is like there so I decided to include a link to the youtube video about the school (the video is about 13 minutes long but it tells and shows a great deal about the school):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9StCkqfRPic

*Please note that they did not ask me to write about this and I am not trying to make anyone feel like they have to send in money or support the schol, but I wanted to share so that everyone could get an idea of some of the places that our team went on our trip. I also wanted to share because of the amazing things that this school and the wonderful people who run it are doing for their community.*

We were lucky enough to visit both locations and it was such an amazing experience.  The picture at the top of the post is from the newer building and shows a class of 4th graders before we entered the classroom to meet them.

The school provides a free education for around 1,500 students now (I hope I got that number correct I just remember hearing a large number and being incredibly amazed by what is being done at this school).  When you drive into the compound the first thing you see are vegetables being grown and students caring for the garden.  You will also see children playing on their playground (they are mostly playing soccer and it is a mixture of ages involved in the game). 

Currently over 30 children live on campus and all students (unless they are members at a different church) attend the church on campus every Sunday with their families. 

God is truly doing some amazing things with this school.

*This is a picture of our team and Charity (in the purple) and some of the children from the primary school.  Charity's parents are the couple who started the school.*

The Biggest Size IS 9....

God showed up in so many amazing ways during our 3 days of shoe distributions.  The first day we we serving the older students (what we would refer to as grades 4-8).  Some of these students, mostly boys, were very tall which meant they had large feet.  That was part of the problem.  We only had a certain number of shoes sized 10-13 and, using our first grade math skills we quickly discovered that the boys outnumbered the shoes.  We knew God would come through because we knew He wanted to love on these children.  The ladies who were running the shoe store would here us request a size and if they notived that we no longer had that size they would grab the biggest pair left (which on the first day were size 9) and pray over them asking God to bless the child and alow the shoes to somehow fit. Everytime that first day the size 9's fit boys who measured feet as 11-12 1/2.  God is so good!!  The next day we had even more times for God to show us His amazing faithfulness and desire to bless these children and love on them in special ways.  We had more growing boys, boys who while very young made almost all of us feel very short I might add, anywaywe had these growing boys and socks.  These were special socks.  They were size 4.5 Toddler.  That's right we had toddler socks and teenage boys.  Now, math is not a storng suit for many people so let me help you out with the math equation we had 2 toddler socks + 1 teenage boy = walmart run.  Funny thing about where we were in Kenya......there was no WalMart.  Instead of Wal Mart we got more of God's amazing faithfulness. Just like with the shoes before ladies in the group put socks on the older boys they said a quick silent prayer asking God to allow the sock to somehow fit.  It may have taken some stretching and patience but those toddler socks worked and stayed on the feet of those teenage boys.  For those of you who have had or currently have teenage sons it's ok to pause here and just take a moment to praise God because you know first hand how much of a miracle that would be.

Theis is a picture of one class waiting to get sized and measured for their new shoes.  To all my teacher friends out there yes you read correctly these students are all in the same classroom! 

In this picture the students are getting their feet washed, some lotion rubbed on their feet, new socks, and fitted for their new shoes. Most of the time they were so excited about the shoes that they were already half off before they sat down in the chair.

We brought 16 of these large duffle bags into the country filled with different sized shoes.

Before we did any distributing we pulled out all 16 bags and sorted the shoes by size on the sidewalk at the hotel.  It was an amazing sight once all the shoes were out.  After inventory we found there were over 500 pairs!