Los tiempos is what people say here to say- it's been forever since i've seen you! so.. felt like it was fitting here since it's been about 2 months, if not more, since i've posted.
sorry about that.
so. to catch you up on my life in one post.. this is gonna be hard, but here we go..
last cycle of teaching ended really well. all of my students passed, thank goodness, and i miss them terribly. sometimes they see me in the hall and tell me they want to repeat level 2 so they can be in my class again. and of course i LOVE hearing that :)
performed the play i was in 5 times in two days, and then once again the other day, with about a weeks notice, thankfully I hadn't forgotten my lines. audra filmed the first little bit for me (my camera ran out of memory after the first scene) so here it is if you want to see it. it's pretty funny. HOWEVER this was the first performance we did, so it was a little rough.. but here you go..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QPUr28RB1w
after that cycle finished, i had a two week break from work. which was awesome. except for the fact that my roommate was in the states for those exact same two weeks. BUT i still had a lot of fun. I got to go on 2 trips.
the first was with a missionary couple from Quito, who I absolutely love, a journeyman from Zamora, and a team from texas. we went to a little town called Cahuaji Alto, WAY up in the mountains (12,000 feet). the men worked on a water filtration system and the women (3 of us) did VBS in the afternoons with the kids, and spent a lot of time with a woman who Mark and Sherry (the missionaries from Quito) have gotten really close to. - it's really exciting actually. her and her family are getting SO close to accepting/understanding the gospel. it's so neat to hear. Marta, that's the woman's name, told us about her son Donni, who is just learning to read, but is DYING to read the Bible. he keeps asking his mom to read it to him. and as we left on the last day, the family asked if they could pray with us, and if we would pray that they would grow in their faith. it was really cool, and i CANNOT wait to go back.
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| tunguraha, the volcano near us that is erupting right now. (thankfully it wasn't while we were THIS close to it) |
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| lunch. that's a rabbit in case you couldn't tell. she killed it right in front of us |
the next trip I took was to Salinas, a city on the beach. A family from my church with a son about my age, knew I would be alone for most of the two weeks, and so they invited me to go with them on their family vacation. which was so nice of them and it was SUCH a great experience. first of all.. no one in this family speaks english. so it was 2, 6 hour drives and 3 full days on the beach where I couldn't speak a lick of english. it was exhausting after a while but very good for me.
I also LOVED getting to know them. I hadn't spent a ton of time with this family before, and so it was really great to get to hear their story. I stayed in a room with Tanya, the mom, and each night we stayed up forever talking about just about everything. She told me all about how her and her husband became christians later in life. It was such a neat story. I feel like Godly wisdom just came pouring out of her with everything she said.
anyways, i'm so thankful to have had the opportunity to go on this trip, and make some new friends.
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| she'd kill me if she knew i put this up here, but i think it's just too funny! she hates boats and evidently i took this just at the right time |
ok so... after that.. i started a new cycle of teaching. all new classes, except for my kids class, they last longer. this cycle's been going pretty well.. my 7-9 class is way better than last cycle. last time there were only 4 students and they wouldn't get excited about anything.. it was a little hard to fill 2 hours of class time. BUT this time i have 11 adults and they're so fun! they work really hard and also love to have fun in class. i never have to worry about the games i bring, that they'll think they're too old for it or something. they love games.
my 5-7 class is a little bit more challenging this time. last time i had mostly older teenagers/ college students, and only a few younger ones. this time it's all high school age students. who are a little hard to deal with sometimes.. but i've made it work. I had to learn to be a lot more strict this semester, and i think i did pretty good.. these pictures are from the country fair, everyone had to present on a different country
i took a week off of work for thanksgiving and spent the week in Cuenca and Zamora with other missionaries. it was really refreshing to be with other missionaries/americans for the week. we had a very american thanksgiving (ha as if there were another type of thanksgiving you could have), same food, played games, hiked in the jungle, felt a lot like being at home (minus the hiking in the jungle part)
but of course i did really miss my family, but i got to skype with them on thanksgiving day, so that was really good.
whew. this exhausting. if anyone's made it this far, i'm surprised.
anyways, since then, just been finishing up the cycle. i've been really busy, but life has been good. i've decided i'm taking the next cycle off from work (jan-feb). i'll teach a little at the english school where audra works to make some money but this will let me be a lot more flexible. BECAUSE... i potentially have the opportunity to do some traveling. when i was in Zamora, i learned about a couple working with the Shuar people, an indigenous group of people living deep in the jungle. this couple helped out with translating the Shuar Bible, which was JUST finished.
- for those of you who don't know i'm looking at working with Wycliffe Bible Translators in the future, so to hear about this ( and look through the actual Shuar Bible) was just really exciting for me
when i asked the journeyman who was telling me about them for their e-mail, just to ask them things and hear their story, he said "you know i bet they'd let you come stay with them if you wanted". now that was blowing my mind. that sounded like the coolest opportunity to me. to actually go live with missionaries/translators out in the jungle and see what their life was like on a day to day basis and learn from them! i was so pumped. so i e-mailed them right away, but didn't mention anything about coming to stay with them, figured i couldn't ask that in the first email. but i recently sent them an email asking if i could come stay with them for a few weeks, or even a few days. right now i'm waiting on the reply (they don't have really reliable internet down there so it takes a while) BUT because of this potential opportunity i decided to leave my schedule relatively open (if i were teaching, there'd be no way i could go and do this), didn't think this was an opportunity i should pass up, and since they leave in april for good, i don't have much time to waste.
in other news.. my visa is up in February, and i am definitely not ready to leave in 2 months. so.. i've been working on a way to extend my visa. i found out, the only way to do this is to get a student visa. SO i have to enroll in a class at the university here. looked through the language classes they offer, and decided to take Quichua. it's the main indigenous language in Ecuador. evidently it's very hard to learn, but i'm soo excited!
last bit of news.. my parents come this wednesday, and i can't wait! they'll be here, in Riobamba, for christmas, and then we'll go to Mindo, a really cool town in the jungle that i haven't been to yet, where there's zip lines, waterfalls, hiking, all that jazz, and then to Quito. so.. i'm sure that'll be the next thing i blog about. i promise next time i wont go 2 months with out posting.
