My Reminiscent Home School

When I lived in Ecuador as a missionary kid, I was home schooled with my two older sisters and three other missionary kids who lived in the same town. Home school was held in a two-room building that was located above the carpenter’s work-shop. We even had our own missionary teacher fly all the way down to Ecuador and ride the bus through the mountains to the very heart of the country where we lived. The small town we lived in was called Saraguro, which was nestled in the valley of the Andes Mountains. My home-school teacher, Aunt Marie, explained to me that Saraguro was sometimes referred to as ‘the bowl’ because it was located in a valley surrounded by mountains on all sides.

Aunt Marie was tall with long, graceful fingers that played the piano like a proficient musician. She had beautiful eyes that were always laughing and a mouth that was always smiling. I learned many valuable things from her in my young years about forgiveness and God’s unconditional love. She sang songs to us kids about Jesus that I still sing today as an adult.

Early every morning, Nicole, Becki, and I would eat breakfast and race down the hill to the diminutive home school. We would all three run into the door at once and tumble into the snug room where Aunt Marie would usually be waiting. Our desks formed a semi-circle around the gas heater, the chalk board behind it, and our teacher’s desk was across the room pointed toward the window that looked over the town. She would spend time with each of us, teaching our little lessons from our A Beka Books, then giving us assignments to complete during the rest of class time. We would sit there, huddled up behind our desks, wishing for just a little bit more warmth from the gas heater to drift in our direction.

We had a tiny bathroom in our classroom and frequently had to check for spiders or cockroaches before using the toilet. The bathroom had an awkward window with nothing but a Sesame Street curtain covering it. I always felt bad for our teacher whose desk was right next to it. Perhaps that’s why she kept the odor-eliminating spray bottle on her desk.

Aunt Marie was very musical. We would sometimes gather around the old organ, and she would play as we sang songs like “One Little Duck,” or “The Little White Duck,” or “Six Little Ducks.” A lot of Little Duck songs.

But my favorite part of the home school was the prestigious tiny library further back into our humble building. A musty odor of old books would hit you as you stepped through the door. Inside the cozy room, there were three windows along wall allowing light to shine in on the dusty books. Shelves filled with children’s and young adult’s books would be lining the walls underneath the windows. Beneath a little square window to the right were more serious books like Spanish textbooks and encyclopedias. I always liked the encyclopedias. They had pictures of the outside world, of countries and people and animals that we had never seen before. For fun, my sisters and I would grab the C and D encyclopedias and leaf through the thin, shiny pages until we got to Dog or Cat, and we would compare them and decide which ones looked the best and which ones looked the ugliest. The hairless cats were always a big hit for the most hideous animals.

In another part of the room were stacks of games that we would sometimes play on recreational time when it was too rainy and cold to play kickball outside. Saraguro had unpredictable weather. Some days seemed as warm as Summer, but the next day could be as rainy and cold as late Fall just before a frost.

The home school had an old computer where we could play educational games. Games where you could learn about fish and math all in one sitting. The computer sat on a worn wooden desk with only one drawer that sometimes had a half a bag of chocolate chips in it. I was always tempted to sneak a few precious pieces from that yellow American chocolate chip bag, but was too scared of getting caught.

Some of my most precious memories take place in that reminiscent classroom. Last time I saw it, the school had been fixed up into a little house where some Ecuadorian friends of ours now live, and they have two little girls who flip through the same books I did when I was their age.