It’s been far too long—our apologies for that. Though in our defense, we’ve been rather busy (as you can see from the previous post).

As to that—yes, Lorraine is pregnant. She’s due in early October. No, we don’t know the gender, but we’ll tell you when we do. We’re excited, of course, and we’re enjoying the adventure of doing all this in a foreign country. But not all of it—we return to the States in mid-June, in plenty of time to have the kid on American soil, surrounded by grandparents and whatnot.

And that leads me to the other thing keeping us busy these days. Returning to the states and having a child means we will need jobs, in order to earn money to purchase the the various baubles and foodstuffs that such children are expected to have these days.

That’s going fairly well. I’ve got an interview lined up for a couple weeks from now, and have been sending off about a resume a day for the past couple weeks. You can’t have too many opportunities, though, so if you know of anyone looking for online marketing help, let me know.

Lorraine, meanwhile, is looking for a part time job, preferably doing church music, or doing some sort of upper level teaching.

In the meantime, though, we’re still loving the teaching. We’re also loving the break from it–due to some odd Brazilian holidays, we have Tuesday through Thursday off this week.

Friday is the International Fair, which Lorraine has been organizing. Hopefully we’ll have some pictures and/or video up about that this weekend. It should be a good time.

In a couple weeks, we’re taking the 9th and 10th graders to São Paulo for Week Without Walls. We’ll be doing some work in an orphanage, sightseeing and spending time building relationships with the students. We’ll be going with another couple from the school who, coincidentally, also learned recently that they’re expecting.

And on another note, I’ve put up some pictures from our recent trip to the Rio zoo on Flickr.

Please be praying for us in all these things, and that we finish our time in Brazil well.

Lorraine wrote the school’s Christmas program this year. Ostensibly, it was the story of two kids from America trying to get situated in Brazil around Christmas. But in fact, like all halfway decent Christmas programs, it was really just an excuse to see cute kids dressed up like angels, shepherds, sheep and pirates. Yes, pirates.

Honest, there’s a pirate in the middle of all the adorable angels, sheep and shepherds if you look closely enough.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving here in Rio, even though we are missing our families during the holidays.

Our Thanksgiving festivities started at school, where my American History class and I celebrated by reading historical Thanksgiving documents, including George Washington’s and Abraham Lincoln’s Thanksgiving proclamations. The kids brought in desserts to share after the school cafeteria’s Thanksgiving turkey lunch, and I baked them a pumpkin pie, since most of them had never tasted one before. Then, we watched Charlie Brown’s Thanksgiving, in true American tradition.

After school, we were invited by our friends Rhonda and Chris to their family’s Thanksgiving celebration, where we ate far too much Cajun-style turkey, stuffing, and pie with some fellow teachers and friends from church. It was a great holiday, and we are thankful that we had wonderful friends to spend it with.

Two events, back to back, broke up the standard school calendar for us at the end of last week. On Friday, we had the first high school service day. These are days set aside to practice service to the communities and various organizations. We did a project the school had done last year–creating Christmas ornaments and other decorations that will be sold at the Christmas Program on December 5. The money raised will go to a ministry in nearby Niteroi that works with street kids and their families.

Then on Saturday we had the Family Fun Fest, an annual school carnival that raises money for the PTSA. It was a fun day, but hot and tiring–we’re only just now recovering from our missing Saturday.

November, if you are unaware, is National Novel Writing Month–the challenge is to write 50,000 words in thirty days. Back in 2006, I wrote a little story that eventually turned into After the Service. This year, I’m writing a sequel to that book–and I’ve got company. I’ve managed to con three other teachers (including my lovely wife) into undertaking this remarkable task along with me. Fully one half of the secondary core teaching faculty is going to be cranking out 1,666.67 words every day for the entirety of next month.

Most of my NaNoWriMo (as it is affectionately known) blogging will be done at a brand new website–the Goddard Publishing Blog. I hope you’ll make your way over there and watch the creative process unfold, but regardless, you can keep track of my progress towards the goal with this nifty little widget here. Wish us luck!

It’s been way, way too long since we posted anything, so I’m going to give a quick recap of the more interesting events of the last month or so:

• The US Dollar went crazy. Economic crisis? Not for us. When we got here in January, one US Dollar was worth about 1.8 Brazilian Reals (pronounced “HAY-ice”. No, seriously.). Over the course of the year, it slowly but steadily dropped, bottoming out at 1.55 or so about the time we arrived back here in August. It bopped around at about 1.55-1.65 for a while, until it suddenly went insane. It peaked at R$2.40, and today is at R$2.12. It has made living here much, much more affordable, which has been a major blessing.
• Speaking of blessings, lots of people have been very generous—thanks so much to all of you who are helping us pay for our transportation. We’re good now on paying for the (surprisingly expensive) flight out here, and are well on our way to paying for our eventual flight back. There are thank you postcards waiting to be mailed.
• We finished First Quarter. It doesn’t seem like we’ve been here that long (hence the unmailed postcards), but we have. Crazy.
• Goddard Publishing has its second book out—Edelsha by T. James Belich. It’s high-quality fantasy—geared for young adults, but enjoyable for those both older and younger. And if you prefer mystery to fantasy, my own After the Service is still available.
• Lorraine’s guitar is not fixed yet, but she is still able to play it. She played it for worship last Sunday, for the first time in Brazil.
• Last week, I went to a Brazilian national team soccer game at Maracana, Brazil’s most famous soccer stadium. (Lorraine did not go, because the game started at 10 pm on a weeknight, and she is more sensible than I am.) Soccer here is like a religion, and Maracana is The Temple. It’s a remarkable eperience: loud, festive and—recently—incredibly frustrating. Because Brazil, apparently is incapable of scoring a goal at home. The game ended in a 0-0 tie. That’s right—90 minutes of soccer, and nobody scored. One of the teachers here has been to three games—each one of them ending in the same ignoble way.
• We’ve started taking Portuguese classes at the school—after school, Mondays & Thursdays. This has been nice, because, while we’ve learned plenty informally, it’s nice to have a time set aside to actively learning a language–and to have someone we can ask questions about it. Lorraine’s skill at pronunciation is beginning to overtake my Spanish-enhanced vocabulary. Today at church, she startled a woman by telling her that she didn’t speak very much Portuguese. The woman, with whom Lorraine had had an conversation last week, had assumed she was Brazilian! (This rarely happens to me, but I suspect it has less to do with my language skills, and more to do with my… lets call it my melanin phenotype.) In related news, I got a Portuguese-English interlinear Bible, which has been really cool.
• Lorraine just baked a pie. Mmmm… pie.

I think that pretty much sums things up. We’ll try to do a better job keeping you all posted over the last part of 2008. Thanks to everyone who has been praying for us–we need plenty of it. God bless!

It’s the dead of winter here in Rio, which means that it’s 85 degrees and clear. We took our first trip to the beach this morning, which was fun.

The week in general has also been fun. School started Monday, and despite our late arrival, Lorraine and I were both ready for it. Having done this once before–in a significantly less than ideal situation–is making my life quite a bit easier this time around.

The size of the school has pretty much stayed the same from last year to this year, which is probably good considering the explosive growth the school has had over the last few years. The largest classes got a bit smaller over the summer, but the smaller classes got a bit larger, so things, in general, are a bit more even now than they were last year.

Those of you who had a chance to hear our spiel this summer know that we were praying for visas for our director and his family. That prayer has been answered far more swiftly than some other visa-related prayers I’ve prayed, and they will be joining us on teh 25th. In the meantime, Bonnie & Larry Roots, a pair of NICS veterans, are filling in. So, that’s one prayer answered–now you can start praying that the new director is a sensible fellow who won’t do something silly like make the lives of his teachers miserable or anything.

Another prayer request–last year, I was never able to get real chemicals to use in my chemistry classes, having to make do with household chemicals and whatever I had on hand. In general it worked out, but I felt like I was shortchanging the kids. Now that I’m also teaching physical science (chem & physics for 9th graders), I need even more. It sounds like we’ve got a place to get them, though–just be in prayer that it all works out and I can get what I need.

Is there anything else to share? We get to watch the Olympics, but it’s all in Portuguese. Michael Phelps, though, is just as big here as he is everywhere else, and we watched Brazil win it’s first gold last night. I’ll have more about the Olympics, though, later.

After many trials, which included unpacking our three bags on the floor of Sea-Tac International Airport, rearranging our stuff, and repacking it into four bags, we are here, safe and sound. The same cannot be said of my guitar case, which is now minus one hinge, one latch, and a fair amount of its structural integrity, but the guitar came through unscathed, so I am not complaining one bit.

All of our luggage made it through, we got our taxi at the airport, and we even met another teacher there who came on our flight, unbeknown to us. Our first staff meeting this morning went well, and we are pleased to be back in Rio. School starts Monday, so we are frantically preparing.

Thanks for all your prayers.

Curiously, even though it is fast approaching winter here in the southern hemisphere, everyone at school refers to the vacation we’ve just started as “summer” break. As in “Have a great summer, see you next year” being written in all the yearbooks we passed out on Friday.

Speaking of yearbooks, the end of the school year is always a time of goodbyes. The goodbyes at ICS-Rio are particularly poignant, because our students don’t just move out of town, they move to other continents. We are sad to see some of our most beloved faces leaving right now, and will miss them in the coming school year. In some ways, I feel like we shortchanged them because we got to school so late. We’ve only known these kids six months, but we still love them.

I will lead worship at Union Church one more time before we leave, then there’s Tim’s birthday on Monday, frantic packing, and we fly out at 6 PM on Wednesday. Please pray for a safe journey for us, and for all the students and staff who are leaving us right now.

As impossible as it is to believe, the school year is winding down. This is particularly difficult to believe down here, where we are entering winter, rather than summer. Lorraine & I are both wearing fleece jackets right now, if you can believe that.

Finals are coming up at the end of this week, and so most of our attention is bent towards that. Once finals are done, we still have a week of classes (no, it doesn’t make a lot of sense), and we’ll be flying back to the NW on the 18th.

I’d like to take this moment to reflect on a year of teaching but I can’t. For one, I’m not done–I still have plenty to do between now and the end. And for another, it’s only been half a year! I am definitely looking forward to running my own classes for an entire year, starting in August.