My first by-myself adventure

I'm really not sure how it's been so long since I wrote. Kinda surprised me when I noticed.

Anyway, I'm going to write about Tuesday. Well, first we have to back up a bit. Adriana, one of the girls in the youth group and one of my closest friends here so far, decided the youth should have at least one day before school starts to do something good for the community. I thought that sounded like a great idea. On Sunday we talked to Israel about what we could do and decided to go work at the children's cancer center, AMANC. The only thing that wasn't ideal about this plan was the fact the rest of my team had readers Tuesday afternoon-ish and couldn't come. (I actually had one at 11:00 that I forgot about and asked Chutney to take him for me - he didn't show anyway, haha.)

And so I went all by myself to the "church building" (which is really a party venue / coffee shop) where I met about 10 youth and Israel. It was challenging and fun not to have any Americans (or Brazilians) to fall back on and speak English to. We ended up working in the garden - cutting grass, pulling weeds, transplanting trees, etc. I realized I don't have Spanish garden vocabulary, but it all worked out in the end. I worked mostly with Nancy, one of the first girls I became friends with at camp. She lives kind of far away so I don't get to see her as much. Pray for her if you think about it - there are a lot of things I'd like to talk to her about but can't really do it in Spanish yet.

Another exciting though less enjoyable aspect of this adventure was the multitude of creepy things. The ground was moving for jumping spiders (which, thanks to Ben, I'm only creeped out by when there are more than five), centipedes and ants ("Estes pican! Those sting!" the girls informed me), maggot-type things, new kinds of beetles, I'm sure the list goes on. Worms are no big deal, but these other things kind of got to me after awhile, haha.

And since I left the house at 8:45, and only had a little "gansito" (Mexico's Little Debbie) and a juice box since, I was pretty hungry by 4:30. Working in the sun takes it out of you. But thankfully, after the long walk to Israel's apartment, we ate pizza. I tried a slice with avocado, it was good. And I even made it home without it raining on me - well, except when I was on the bus...