July 7 - July 9

7/7/2012 at 7am?

I finally got home last night at like 11pm-ish.  I was way too tired to journal.  But right now I'm sitting on the back porch of the Calandria main house looking out over mountains and the Nicoya Gulf.  It is so beautiful.  Danny, Erick, Nacho, Chris, Jerson, and Eduardo are currently finishing up their set-up and Josette went with Evelyn to get Alissa and Lukas I think.  I'm waiting for the kids to come.

My view from my rocking chair on the back porch.

Yesterday we (my small group café con leche) did a bunch of artistic workshops including learning the basics about photo composition, painting, and writing poetry.  We had pizza and ice cream for lunch and of course played a few dinámicas throughout the day.  Then Alissa and I helped our small-small group of now 10 girls think about what they might want to do in the future.  I got to talk with Gabriela and Kimberly and Jessica and especially Valeri, and it was a very neat blessing and privilege to be able to hear these girls' dreams.

After the day ended the leaders and I all went to La Calandria to scope the place out and brainstorm activities.  I then came back to the Institute for some time, did some blog work, and walked home with Ryan, which was a pleasure because we usually never get to hold one-on-one conversation.  I got home, ate dinner, hung out with Luis, and then went to Abby's with Ryan and Jon to make horchata and eat delicious red sugary bread-cookie things and watch How to Train Your Dragon.  I stepped in their cockroach trap in the process.  It got stuck to my shoe.  We all laughed hysterically because of the immense effort it took to get the trap unstuck, plus then my shoe stuck and squeaked for a while afterward with each step I took.  We also watched the vision-impaired audio version of the first scene of the movie.  It was so super funny.  We all had a late, but good, night.

10:30pm

Sunset while throwing together the slide show.

I am way tired.  Today I got into a minor mud war and we also did several dinámicas involving human knots, including one that the guy Oscar who gave the sexuality talk did.  He was very good and addressed the topic as a whole in a great and godly manner, but we had no small group time programmed in to discuss it afterward, which was a real shame.  We also had a talk on orchids from Gabriel from the Art House, and then I had the opportunity to go with Evelyn and John and test the rope bridge course we'll be doing tomorrow, which was super cool.  Then I spent two frantic hours throwing together a slide show in a video program I have had no experience with (not to mention all the commands were in Spanish), but all in all we were able to show it after the talent show and it turned out great, at least for a quick two-hour job.  Then the kids all had a dance party and unfortunately there wasn't enough bachata/meringue and I only got to dance for like a minute with one of the other leaders Eduardo, which we were both openly frustrated about.  All the reggaton-y and pop music sucks.  And I just felt in my heart that it wasn't right for me to be there even though I had to supervise.

7/9/2012 at 8:10am

A beautiful, albeit early, morning.

I skipped yesterday journaling again due to time constraints, oh well.  Pura vida.  In any case, the boys (for sure Jerson and Danny, probably Eduardo and Erick and Lukas and Nacho as well) woke us all up around 1am by banging on the floor from underneath the room (since it was raised off the ground) with brooms and then throwing pebbles at the window and from on the roof and other sorts of crazy things in an attempt to scare me and my girls.  But I knew it was coming, and more than anything, since I was sleeping on the floor and not in a bed I was just annoyed and also worried how my girls would react.  They reacted fine, just being really annoyed and crabby and they knew it was the boys.  Bad words were being thrown around.  Eventually, though I was freezing, I found my way back to sleep and dreamt of catching butterflies and birds (no joke).

The following day I barely escaped being forced to go through a muddy obstacle course and get wet in a swimming pool as I helped run both the activities and also serve food.  It was nice because I got to chat with the young adult women Kim, Nicolette, and Shannon for breakfast (who all used to live in the United States at one point).  Eventually we all closed the camp with a photo and cheer and sent the kids home and the leaders all finished picking stuff up, then Evelyn went and dropped it all off alone before she came back and picked us all up and dropped us off.  I showered and ate dinner and then dashed over to the church for the reception of the people who went to Peniel, and it was so super cool seeing and hearing how God touched the lives of different people in different ways.  After that, I out of curiosity stopped by Gabriel's house to see if he had come back for the weekend, and he had, so he invited me in and we talked a lot and played a super-competitive game of Uno.  We ended up tying after two games so apparently next weekend we're going to try to break the tie. He walked me back home and I passed out and when I woke up this morning I basically decided that I need to take today off and rest and get done other stuff that I need to get done.