Saturday, March 27 again
The teachers invited me over for night. It was a good evening involving chips and salsa, a run around because the place that was selling food didn’t actually have food for us, making our own supper and eventually playing rounds and rounds of Uno. With no mercy shown. When we went to bed, my alarm showed that I could sleep for 9.5 hours despite the hour being 2300 and church starting at 0900 the next morning. We have time change here this weekend and the long night was due to this fact.
Sunday, March
These girls like to sleep as late as possible, unlike me. I’d been awake for awhile when, at 0730 they started bustling about. One insisted that it was 0830 and we had to be at church soon and the other one eventually got it thru to her that it was actually 0730 and apologized for making me get up early. I invited the girls over for dinner to return the favor of me spending night with them so I took them there in my fancy little white Changan Alsvin right after church since the water wasn’t on and we couldn’t wash breakfast dishes first. When we got back to church around 1430 people were already setting up the volley ball court and waiting for the keys so they could get the chairs out of the teacher house. A few of the guys started with a few games of piki before some of the girls convinced them to play volley with us. These people are quite good at volley and the games are always a lot of fun. I do find myself on the ground after diving to try to save the play more often then I would have on the gym or barn floor back home which is also quite an unusual sight here. A more normal sight here would be a slide with an amazing kick at the end due to lots of piki playing and instincts. Piki is volleyball using anything but your hands. With only 2 or 3 players on each side. No double touch. And each play has to be 3 hits before it goes over. And if you have 3 players then each person has to hit it once in the play. Slightly intense.
Monday, March
First day in a long time that I can remember that I didn’t turn on my AC.
Wednesday, March 31
Bible study at Juan’s. In the midst of our discussion, 3 or 4 dogs ran barking thru the yard next door, chasing a yelping dog. The tiny dog on the yard watched them go and interrupted [some of] us with a howl. People milled around talking and sharing chipa. And don Juan and ña Felicita sit and carry on with our lesson like they don’t notice a thing.
Thursday, April 1
Shayla and I had great plans to finally visit some veinte mil GS stores that we’ve been talking about for awhile but our plans were thwarted due to Easter. So we went home and ate chipa and drank terere with the family instead. Just kidding about the chipa part.
Friday, April 2
I’m not sure if I going to make a very good impression with my green sweater on a green dress. I think that’s a worse fashion mistake then an ensemble of blue and green. (Referring to the old adage ‘blue and green should never be seen) Anyways, at least the kids won’t care. Or maybe they will but the glow sticks will out weigh the fashion when it comes to first impressions. Or maybe no one will even notice and I’m making a big deal about it cuz I need something to write about and I’m trying to be slightly sarcastic and funny.
Actually, they were just kind of appalled that I was wearing a sweater in the first place. They thought that 23°C or so was still rather warm. After an hour or so of waiting and watching every body unite with their friends who were aboard the same plane and pretending to understand the low German conversation going on beside us, we finally around midnight we glimpsed them and they glimpsed us and soon we were loaded into the vehicles and driving thry deserted dark streets. And then we went to bed.
My new family. From Whitemouth, MB David and Lynora Giesbrecht Derek (9) Leah (7) Caleb (4) Evan (1.5)
Saturday, April 3, 2021
I got up on time and spent some quality alone time in several of the quiet, shady places that most people don’t frequent so early when staying at a hotel. We made our way to Barrio San Pedro and started to get settled in.
Sunday, April 4, 2021
Normal Sunday morning church. I taught children’s Sunday school again for the first time in a long time. The ages and quantity of the children that come haven’t been conducive to a children’s class since Eric’s left. Thais (Felicita’s granddaughter, age 14) has switched over to adult class but her brother Cristian (2) sat and colored with us for awhile but soon got a little lonesome for his sister. My nap was interrupted when Sara and her brother Gamaliel stopped in. Gama is going to teach Spanish to David’s and wanted to meet them. Their family has been friends with the missionaries for quite a while and some of them can speak English quite well. I was super enthused after they left because I found that I must have learned a lot of Spanish in the last few weeks while I was in Campo 9 and I could understand and talk with Sara a lot better. We played our standard few rounds of Nervioso (a fast paced game with Uno cards) and tried to get Derek to play with us. Jonatan (10 year old from down the street) came over to play and later he went on a walk with us around the neighborhood and showed us his school and told us which dogs had bit him before and tried to teach us how to count in Guarani.
Monday, April 5, 2021
A bit of a blur of school books and visiting don Juan and Karlins leaving.
Tuesday, April 6, 2021
A lot of things happen that I don’t remember the exact time or day of. I biked with Derek and Leah to Julian’s fruit stand down at the cruce one day. (Julian and Pamfila are Sara and Gama’s parents). We did a bit of sight seeing shopping one day. We started school in the afternoon. I didn’t have everything figured out but I’ll just go with the flow.
Wednesday, April 7
Gama arrived to start language study at 0800. I took the school aged children and the underage school children into the school room and proceeded to have a semblance of a normal school day. Caleb has a makeshift desk to color at and seems to enjoy being in school with his siblings. Evan runs in and out as long as he’s happy and doesn’t disturb the classes going on just outside in the quincho too much. I’m feeling sort of like a teacher in Gallup again, not a school teacher. Sippy cups on my desk, toys all over the classroom floor. A child in one arm as I’m explaining some math problems to the scholars. Who have been doing amazing with everything that goes on while they’re trying to study. Both schools starts at 0800 and go til 1100. The children and I start again at 1300 and have another hour to finish things up. This way, the little boys can be with their parents a bit and Leah and Derek can have a bit of a quiet part in their school day yet. Spanish classes start up again at 1400 and run til 1700 on the days that they go into the afternoon. Some days it’s just morning.
Our first venture without someone quite fluent in both English and Spanish happened this afternoon. We went to visit ña Felicita and her family. Now, I did a bunch of Spanish studying while I was in Campo 9 and I’m finding out I learned a lot from that. I could understand and translate almost everything that they wanted me to understand. I had a hard time forming replies to carry on a conversation but I think ña Felicita was still quite happy that we came to see her.
Thursday, April 8
I mentioned to the Spanish students that Evan and I were going to walk to Julian’s stand for some things we needed for supper and seeing as they were in the midst of a lesson focused exactly on grocery shopping, and were actually going thru a conversation of buying fruit the teacher thought to make it real and suggested that we all go. So we made a jolly trip down to the cruce (a cruce is an intersection where 2 main roads meet. There are only 2 main roads in Barrio San Pedro.) where Pamfila passed out bananas to all of us to eat while we chatted. Evan and I continued on to the libreria while the rest walked back home. Again I was pleasantly surprised at how well I got along while trying to buy stuff like ‘notebooks’ and ‘pencil sharpeners.’ It helped that the lady new Eric’s and was super friendly and nice and repeated herself in different words to make sure I understood and she understood. Two people came in for quick printing jobs while we were there but Evan and I were enjoying ourselves enough that we didn’t mind letting them go ahead. We stopped in at the pharmacy where Sara just started working to say hi on our way back home, and waved as we passed the fruit stand again. (Lynora described me as being ‘radiant’ when I came back from my walk. I feel a bit embarrassed as this whole finally catching on to and being able to converse well enough in Spanish should have come a bit earlier but I don’t actually think I’ve been to slow at learning considering I haven’t had any classes of any kind so I’ll try not to be embarrassed. I could understand a lot before Eric’s left but now I don’t have Rachelle to do all the talking so I have to start. I am truly happy you like talking though Rachelle, because I don’t. )
Friday, April 9
Started an art project coloring names tags for the desks because I didn’t have any better ideas. Or maybe I was to lazy to try something fancy with sticks and paint and all that sort of cool stuff. I took the kids on a walk this afternoon and we stopped and bought a coke on the way home. (The next day, Caleb told his mom that he would like to go on another walk with me but not her. I kinda think he realized he could get me to buy another coke sooner than she would lol.) The neighbor lady, Blanca Nieve, was playing volley with her friends and invited me to join her but I told her I’d like to come another day when I didn’t have quite so many kids to keep track of. I’m not sure if they play during the week but maybe my aim for the next few weeks will be to play with them as much as possible.
Saturday, April 10
Did weekend stuff like figuring out how soon we’ll be done school and trying to write this interestingly. We picked up ña Felicita and met Karlins at Don Juan’s for Bible Study. Because of time change, he requested that Bible Study be at 1500 instead of the normal 1630. I’m not sure if he’s planning to talk the extra half hour or if he wants us to leave half an hour earlier. He does seem to like to talk and due to his age (90 some. I don’t know if he actually knows how old he is) he has a lot of time to sit and study the Bible so he has a lot of thoughts and questions.
I’m just thankful that cockroaches don’t fly.
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