Grace | Amy Medina

Grace and Miss Finocchi

My girl started fifth grade this week. Fifth grade isn’t usually one of those landmark years, but for me, it is pretty significant.

Fifteen years ago, I came to Haven of Peace Academy to teach fifth grade. It was 2001, and I walked into that same classroom. I was 24 years old. HOPAC was only six years old, and that classroom had just been built. Cement dust was still all over the floor and not a single bulletin board was on the newly painted walls.

I was fighting my own internal battles as I prepared for that school year, many days barely coping. But that class walked in on that first day, and we fell instantly in love. After teaching in California, I was relieved to have a class that was not jaded by a culture that made them grow up too fast. That classroom was my haven, and that class fed my soul.

When Narnia was being born, you could stick a hunk of metal in the ground and it would grow a lamppost. Those days at HOPAC were the same. The school was young and everything was new and we got the privilege of creating culture and tradition. Some of the things my class did that year are still happening today, like Roman Day and the annual trip to the Amani rainforest.

I spent two years with that class, teaching them sixth grade as well as fifth, and many of those students have been a part of my life ever since. Now fifteen years have gone by.

2002

2016

I watched them graduate from high school and I have celebrated their graduation from college. They are now the age I was when I taught them. They are my friends, and I think they teach me more than I taught them. Many of them have returned to Tanzania to change their world. In fact, Dorothy (center) leaves tomorrow to get her Masters in educational policy at Harvard, and then she’ll come back and transform education in Tanzania.

So yeah. For my own girl, fifteen years later, to enter that very same fifth grade classroom? Pretty darn cool.

And Now She’s Ten.

By Amy Medina

On January 9, 2016

In Other

This girl……this girl made me a Mommy. And now she’s blessed us with her sunshine for 10 years.

Ten is a great age. Self-doubt hasn’t hit her yet; she believes she can do anything without self-consciousness. Her friends are the same; they love each other and cheer for each other without competition. She loves her siblings, she loves sports and reading and crafts and trying out just about anything. She can actually help me in the kitchen without being a liability. She is a peace-maker and an includer. She still holds my hand. It’s pretty amazing that I get the privilege of being her mom.

Photo credit for both of the above: Rebecca Laarman

We celebrated yesterday with her friends. They made their own picture frames, their own pizza, and their own ice cream sundaes. (Can you tell Grace is all about making things?) They made a huge noise and a huge mess but it was a party to remember. But I think my favorite part was when a Korean friend brought an entire plate of sushi rolls and all the girls scarfed them down. True Third-Culture Kids.

My Favorite Kids, August ’till December

By Amy Medina

On December 13, 2015

In Other

The emphasis around here lately has been on Johnny….but here’s a look into my other sweethearts’ lives.

First Day of School

My first grader is lucky enough to have her brother’s teacher from last year

Josiah’s 2nd grade teacher

Grace’s 4th Grade Teacher (and soccer coach!)

Pamoja Week (like Spirit Week) Photo credit: Rebecca Laarman

Math Detectives for Math Week. We actually bought the hats from someone who was selling them on the side of the road. Because, apparently, these are the kind of hats Math Detectives wear. Now you know.

Grace is emerging as a fantastic soccer player….thanks her to hard work and her Daddy’s instruction.

First grade assembly…Lily was the “prop girl” holding the water…she took the job very seriously.

Post-assembly love.

4th Grade Assembly

Now We Are Six

By Amy Medina

On August 26, 2015

In Other

“Tiger”

Totally need to submit this to Awkward Family Photos

Just keepin’ it real.

Candy in mouth; tears gone. Mostly.

What DID you get yourself into?

Grace’s Pilgrimage

By Amy Medina

On July 18, 2015

In Other

“I’m from Moshi,” Grace would always proudly announce.

Yet she had never been there since she was 10 months old. So one of the main purposes in our road trip was for Grace to finally see the city where she was born. There’s a lot of questions about her history that we won’t ever be able to answer, so we want to be able to fill in as many holes as we can. Grace needed to see Moshi and her orphanage–to put together a few more pieces of her identity.

So we drove 340 miles up north to Moshi, the city that rests in the shadow of Kilimanjaro. She saw the building where she lived until she was 10 months old; she toured the orphanage and she met Mama Lynn, the founder of Light in Africa and the woman who welcomed her as a newborn.

This visit was meant to be all about Grace, but I found it to be a pilgrimage of my own. It all came rushing back to me–the first time I met her, the three subsequent trips up to Moshi by myself to fight for her paperwork, the social worker who battled me on it. I was relatively new to Tanzania, new to adoption or even any kind of parenting. That same year, I had a miscarriage and had gotten my hopes set on two other children whose adoptions fell through.

I wasn’t just fighting for a child, I was fighting to become a mom. The wait felt excruciating. It finally ended on November 1, 2006. Grace entered our lives with her sunshine, and our lives were never the same again.