It's October!

(10/1-10/4) The week started off a little slow. Monday I woke up and just read a lot. Then I walked to Lider because I had forgotten a few things the day before when I went. I realized I didn’t feel like cooking lunch so I walked to this cute little restaurant and got two empanadas. It was my first time at this restaurant and it was really good, just a little expensive. When I got back I started making the dessert for Donce. I made sugar cookies. The first batch turned out weird so my friend who was helping me added a lot more flour and then they were fine. We started small groups after that which was really good. I understood a lot of what Phil and the other students were saying so that made me really happy. Then Donce started and we ate dinner which was Pastel de Papas, basically mashed potatoes, beef, eggs, onions, and cheese. It sounds really strange but it’s delicious. Claudia gave the talk which was good. The game to see who cleans was very interesting. There were six teams of six and every team had a fork, spoon, knife, piece of wrapped candy, banana, and a hardboiled egg. Basically with one hand you had to open the food item and feed the person across from you. It was really funny and believe it or not my team won! And it was all because of me opening the hardboiled egg with the spoon! I was so excited, it was my first time winning. After that I hung out with students and played football with a few guys, I threw a lot better than most of them. Tuesday I woke up and read some and then Katie and I walked to the post office to mail a few letters. When we got back I realized how much leftover food there was from Donce and ate leftovers instead of cooking, which I believe was a great decision. For the rest of the day I wrote a lot and started memorizing scripture in Spanish for a couple of hours. After that we had our Café a lo Gringo meeting and our Exchange student meeting which both were very productive today. After that I ate more leftovers for dinner and cooked a little something to go along with it then Katie and I watched a little TV, did Insanity, and went to bed. Wednesday was an interesting one. I had to wake up early and go to the extranjeria office to pay money to extend my visa, sounds simple right? Wrong. I waited an hour to get a slip of paper, then I had to go copy my passport and my visa, and then I had to go back to the lady to get another slip of paper, and then I had to go to the bank, and then I had to go back to the lady to get a stamp on my visa. All in all it took about three hours. It was crazy and luckily Amy (Frizz’s wife) was there with me or I would have been so lost. Katie was there too to get her student visa or something as well. Afterwards we walked around in our favorite shopping center and then Katie went to class and I came home. I was here for about 30 minutes when Greg asked if I wanted to go visit Kamillo. Kamilo is a student in El Oasis who over the weekend got attacked in a dance club. The guy broke a bottle over Kamilo’s head and slit his throat with it. He also tried to stab him in the heart but luckily he missed. All of this happened because Kamilo was trying to protect a girl from an obviously drunk and rude person. He’s pretty beat up, but he is ok. I think there are over 25 stitches in face. We went to his house bearing gifts of icecream and cookies. We talked to him and his family for about an hour about everything that took place. It was really scary for the entire family. He can’t leave the house for another two weeks while he heals. Luckily El Oasis students go every day to spend some time with him. He really is a great guy. He is going to have some serious scars, but he should make a full recovery. The rest of the night was very calm. I made dinner and watched Criminal Minds then took a shower and went to bed. Thursday was fun. I woke up and went to staff meeting. The guy who heads CMF was visiting for the week so he was there too. I really enjoy going to staff meeting with these guys. Afterwards I got all of my stuff together for Café a lo Gringo which didn’t take super long so that was good. The staff had lunch together with the two people from Atlanta visiting for a wedding and the CMF guy, but it was really cool because we ordered Waya’s which is the salad place and sat outside and ate together. It was really cute. After that I did my chore which was cleaning the girl’s bathroom and then I made the brownies. Café a lo Gringo started not too long after that and it was a fun one! The first game was basically just doing the Cha-Cha Slide which everyone had a blast doing. The next game we gave them rhyming words and they had to come up with a song in English, that was pretty funny to hear. Tertulia started soon after that and the dinner tonight was taco salad, delicious. The worship was awesome and the talk given by Eli was awesome as well. I understand Eli more than anyone here so that was awesome being able to understand the main points of her talk. After Tertulia things got crazy! We had to pack for San Pedro, I had to write this blog, and we had to do Insanity. It was crazy but we got it all done. We’re leaving in the morning at 6:30am so wish us luck! 

my good friend Nani

our winning table!

the stamp I waited three hours for