Thanksgiving at the beach...yeah!
I recently realized that all of my blog entries begin with the word "so". Henceforth I will not be prefacing them with that word, so if you catch me doing it, please beat me over the head with an electronic wet noodle.
Somehow my last post didn't get published (I probably hit 'save as a draft' instead of 'publish') but for those of you who don't know, we went to the beach for Thanksgiving. Now, I know most college students get to go home for Thanksgiving, but not usually those in Ecuador. So we had a big Thanksgiving feast here at school, with turkey and stuffing and potatoes and pumpkin pie and all that jazz. I got to decorate the tables, which is what really made it like Thanksgiving...I don't know what it would have been like if I hadn' t gotten to, because it wasn't that much like Thanksgiving. We still had classes and E4 and ministries...did I mention we ate Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday? That's because on Wednesday night at midnight we all climbed on a bus to head to the beach. It was sweet...the Pacific ocean, the sun, the sea-level altitude...
Unfortunately, there were a few downsides to this trip. Ready?
1. Due to an accident due to the stupidity of pretty much all of us, Greta, one of the students here, spent Sunday through Wednesday morning in the hospital. She's back now, and doing well, but she had a spinal injury that requires her to wear a brace when she's standing and pretty much she can't stand for more than 15 minutes at a time a few times a day. The rest of hte time she has to be laying down. So she and Annalea stayed here while we all went to the beach, and we felt that loss. Trust me, if you could read the e-mail I sent home after the accident (like, the day after, when we were all still really freaked out) you would realize how scary of a thing this was for us. So keep Greta in your prayers, and also thank God her injury wasn't worse...she'll eventually recover.
2. Sunburn. I put on SPF 50 about 3 times a day, so I only got a little bit of one. Some people, on the other hand, weren't so thorough, so there are quite a few people with red and peeling skin.
3. Insects. I have at least 12 bug bites all over my body, which sucks. That's the trouble with lower altitudes. Let's just hope there's no danger of me getting Malaria there, because I don't have to take Malaria medicine for where we live, and nobody said anything about needing it at the beach. Malaria would suck.
4. Does anyone else think it's ironic that they told us to make sure we locked our cabanas so nobody would steal our stuff, and then my digital camera gets stolen out of our room that we did lock? Natalie had shampoo, makeup, and all of her pants and a couple of skirts stolen too. Due to the nature of these thefts (and the fact that they were probably the only other ones in our room) we suspect the cleaning ladies. So while I did take some sweet pictures at the beach, the only ones who get to see them are the people who stole my camera.
Don't get me wrong, the beach trip was fun and really relaxing. It just stinks that there had to be so many things to make it less-than-perfect.
Ok, so I should probably go...the next three weeks (only three weeks before we go home!!! AAAAAHHHH!!!) are going to be CRAZY. A brief schedule for you, excluding practices and probably a lot of things that I'll forget.
Thursday, Nov 30. Cookie baking with our E4 groups for Friday
Friday, December 1. Sandwich making for the Dump party on Saturday...basically we're going to be assembling 2500 sanwiches. Also cookie eating and singing of carols.
Saturday, December 2. We leave school at 6:30 am for the Zambiza dump in Quito. It's basically this huge carnival thing where we have games, face painting, and of course food (all free of charge) for some of the poor of Quito. That's where the 2500 sandwiches come in. There are a bunch of other churches and groups from the States that will be helping too, but it's going to be chaotic nonetheless.
Sunday, December 3. In order to get back here after Christmas, the CBC students must all have something called a Censo. The Censo office is retarded, and although we tried multiple times to get our Censos months ago, they kept refusing us. So the only time we can go now is this Sunday. I'm pretty sure we're leaving at something like 6 am this time, and when we get there we get a number, then leave and go to church, get lunch, and go back to the Censo office and hope they feel like giving us Censos. Please pray...we really don't want to have to go through this anymore.
Monday, December 4. We have classes in the morning, but in the afternoon we have something called "Quito days" on campus with Margot, our spanish teacher. None of us really knows what it is, but it's supposed to be fun. Unfortunately...
Tuesday, December 5. Freaking 2500 word paper on The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer Due. After that weekend, and taking into account the fact that most of us haven't finished the book yet and it's not light reading. We're all gonna die.
After that, things aren't so bad....well....maybe...
Friday, December 8. All day trip to Otavalo. I'll be doing all my Christmas shopping here, so if you want anything specific you might want to leave me a comment or send an email about it.
Saturday, December 8. All day dress rehearsal for our Christmas concerts.
Sunday, December 9. Sometime a concert in English for English Fellowship church, then after that a spanish one for a bunch of Spanish-speaking churches. By the way, did I mention that we're singing eleven songs, most of them in both languages? And doing puppets, and drama, and I have to do a painting sometime really soon. We're not that ready at all. Yikes!
After that all we have is finishing up with school stuff (which, by the way, we have classes on all of the weekdays except for the friday we go to Otavalo) and the Christmas party for our ministry sites and a party for ourselves and then we all fly home. So much stuff in so little time!!!!
So I really need to go read Bonhoeffer. Please pray I don't go insane. See you all in three weeks.
I recently realized that all of my blog entries begin with the word "so". Henceforth I will not be prefacing them with that word, so if you catch me doing it, please beat me over the head with an electronic wet noodle.
Somehow my last post didn't get published (I probably hit 'save as a draft' instead of 'publish') but for those of you who don't know, we went to the beach for Thanksgiving. Now, I know most college students get to go home for Thanksgiving, but not usually those in Ecuador. So we had a big Thanksgiving feast here at school, with turkey and stuffing and potatoes and pumpkin pie and all that jazz. I got to decorate the tables, which is what really made it like Thanksgiving...I don't know what it would have been like if I hadn' t gotten to, because it wasn't that much like Thanksgiving. We still had classes and E4 and ministries...did I mention we ate Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday? That's because on Wednesday night at midnight we all climbed on a bus to head to the beach. It was sweet...the Pacific ocean, the sun, the sea-level altitude...
Unfortunately, there were a few downsides to this trip. Ready?
1. Due to an accident due to the stupidity of pretty much all of us, Greta, one of the students here, spent Sunday through Wednesday morning in the hospital. She's back now, and doing well, but she had a spinal injury that requires her to wear a brace when she's standing and pretty much she can't stand for more than 15 minutes at a time a few times a day. The rest of hte time she has to be laying down. So she and Annalea stayed here while we all went to the beach, and we felt that loss. Trust me, if you could read the e-mail I sent home after the accident (like, the day after, when we were all still really freaked out) you would realize how scary of a thing this was for us. So keep Greta in your prayers, and also thank God her injury wasn't worse...she'll eventually recover.
2. Sunburn. I put on SPF 50 about 3 times a day, so I only got a little bit of one. Some people, on the other hand, weren't so thorough, so there are quite a few people with red and peeling skin.
3. Insects. I have at least 12 bug bites all over my body, which sucks. That's the trouble with lower altitudes. Let's just hope there's no danger of me getting Malaria there, because I don't have to take Malaria medicine for where we live, and nobody said anything about needing it at the beach. Malaria would suck.
4. Does anyone else think it's ironic that they told us to make sure we locked our cabanas so nobody would steal our stuff, and then my digital camera gets stolen out of our room that we did lock? Natalie had shampoo, makeup, and all of her pants and a couple of skirts stolen too. Due to the nature of these thefts (and the fact that they were probably the only other ones in our room) we suspect the cleaning ladies. So while I did take some sweet pictures at the beach, the only ones who get to see them are the people who stole my camera.
Don't get me wrong, the beach trip was fun and really relaxing. It just stinks that there had to be so many things to make it less-than-perfect.
Ok, so I should probably go...the next three weeks (only three weeks before we go home!!! AAAAAHHHH!!!) are going to be CRAZY. A brief schedule for you, excluding practices and probably a lot of things that I'll forget.
Thursday, Nov 30. Cookie baking with our E4 groups for Friday
Friday, December 1. Sandwich making for the Dump party on Saturday...basically we're going to be assembling 2500 sanwiches. Also cookie eating and singing of carols.
Saturday, December 2. We leave school at 6:30 am for the Zambiza dump in Quito. It's basically this huge carnival thing where we have games, face painting, and of course food (all free of charge) for some of the poor of Quito. That's where the 2500 sandwiches come in. There are a bunch of other churches and groups from the States that will be helping too, but it's going to be chaotic nonetheless.
Sunday, December 3. In order to get back here after Christmas, the CBC students must all have something called a Censo. The Censo office is retarded, and although we tried multiple times to get our Censos months ago, they kept refusing us. So the only time we can go now is this Sunday. I'm pretty sure we're leaving at something like 6 am this time, and when we get there we get a number, then leave and go to church, get lunch, and go back to the Censo office and hope they feel like giving us Censos. Please pray...we really don't want to have to go through this anymore.
Monday, December 4. We have classes in the morning, but in the afternoon we have something called "Quito days" on campus with Margot, our spanish teacher. None of us really knows what it is, but it's supposed to be fun. Unfortunately...
Tuesday, December 5. Freaking 2500 word paper on The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer Due. After that weekend, and taking into account the fact that most of us haven't finished the book yet and it's not light reading. We're all gonna die.
After that, things aren't so bad....well....maybe...
Friday, December 8. All day trip to Otavalo. I'll be doing all my Christmas shopping here, so if you want anything specific you might want to leave me a comment or send an email about it.
Saturday, December 8. All day dress rehearsal for our Christmas concerts.
Sunday, December 9. Sometime a concert in English for English Fellowship church, then after that a spanish one for a bunch of Spanish-speaking churches. By the way, did I mention that we're singing eleven songs, most of them in both languages? And doing puppets, and drama, and I have to do a painting sometime really soon. We're not that ready at all. Yikes!
After that all we have is finishing up with school stuff (which, by the way, we have classes on all of the weekdays except for the friday we go to Otavalo) and the Christmas party for our ministry sites and a party for ourselves and then we all fly home. So much stuff in so little time!!!!
So I really need to go read Bonhoeffer. Please pray I don't go insane. See you all in three weeks.
posted by Kira at 12:46 PM
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