One month down

It’s been a month already since I’ve been here. Wow…time sure does fly here. We are always just so busy doing things, teaching, communities, confirmation, sponsorship programs, chores, visa stuff, etc…that sometimes you don’t realize the time just flying by.

This month we picked up the last of our volunteers from the airport, Marcos. The morning he was coming in to Santa Cruz, we went to help clean his room to make it a little bit more welcoming for him. After that, Judy and Steph headed to the bank, while Katie and I headed out with cleaning supplies in hand, trying to find a driver to take us to the airport to pick up Marcos. I was carrying the mop and bucket full of cleaning supplies around town, and around the school while going from place to place looking for someone to drives us to the airport, I felt like a janitor lol…We ended up finding someone to take us. The father of a store owner around town ended up helping us out. Things somehow always work out in the end for us =).

Unfortunately, his plane was delayed so we had to wait a couple of hours until he got there. I felt bad for our driver since he was doing us a favor but there was nothing we could do. We ended up hanging out around the airport, Viru Viru, and we found a Cinnabon!!! A rare treat! So of course we had to get some.

So now we have five volunteers here in Okinawa, for now at least. Katie will be ending her year and will be heading back home in December, so it’ll be four again, Judy, Marcos, Stephanie and myself. I hope for it to be a good year.

Every Sunday we help out with confirmation. I usually help Sor Ely, with her confirmation class, but it’s been two Sundays in a row where she has had other things to do and so I had to step up to the plate. Luckily, I wasn’t alone, Steph and I taught the first Sunday, and Marcos and I the second. It was interesting. Teens here are just as “excited” for confirmation as teens back home, notice the quotation marks, lol… But the confirmation program is different than home. Class is from 4-8 and they start the year in February and end it in November. By the way, this is the first year for these kids, so these kids will not be confirming until next year in November and they don’t have a Year 1 or Year 2 program like back home. So if new kids want to enter the confirmation program, they are going to have to wait until 2014. I find it so strange. But it just goes to show you how different things are here.

Last weekend we had the other SLM’s come to a pool day here in Okinawa. We had great food and then went to the pool across the street. It was so great seeing everyone again and just having a day to relax and have fun after a week of hard work. =)

This past week I was asked by Sor Nora to take over one of her High School classes. She teaches religion. I will be honest, I was nervous, because I really haven’t been on my own teaching yet, I usually help Katie with her English classes, and Katie teaches the 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th graders. We don’t teach High School because you need a teacher certificate to be able to teach. So substituting on my own was nerve racking, and finding out it was High School, that made it even more nerve racking. But instead of getting anxious about it, I remembered why I was here, why I decided to come to Bolivia, and that I have been around High School students before and definitely a lot more than in a classroom, and for a lot more than just 45 minutes, so I stepped up to the plate and accepted the challenge, and just asked God and the Holy Spirit to guide me and help me. In the end it wasn’t bad at all, and it went by so fast. What I liked the most is that I got to meet a new group of teens, a new group to say hello to while walking on campus, and they were glad to meet me as well. It went well =).

Before coming to Okinawa, Marcos was a volunteer in another town called Yapacani, here in Bolivia. He said he wanted to visit on a Saturday because the kids over there have oratory every Saturday afternoon. He asked if we wanted to come and we all said yes. So we took a trip to Yapacani. It was nice to get out of Okinawa and go somewhere completely new. Yapacani is a great town. It has more of a jungle feel than Oki does. But what I loved the most is that this place has Salesian written all over it! =) Their oratory is full of kids!!!! It was so much fun meeting Marcos’ kids and just being able to play with them. You really felt the spirit of Don Bosco present in this oratory. It felt like camp!!! =) And they have this every Saturday, OMG, IT’S LIKE CAMP EVERY SATURDAY! WHAT!!?? I was in heaven! It was great. They start oratory just playing, and then they gather together and dance some songs led by their ‘animadores.’ After that they head out to the movie theater, which btw, is called, Cine Teatro DON BOSCO ^_^!!! And it’s owned by the Salesians! And it’s an actual movie theater that is also opened to the public. Jiggga whaaaaa??!! AWESOME! We watched Ice Age, I think it was the 4^th one. It was great fun being in there, even if it did feel like a furnace…lol. I had fun with the kids. The oratory is run by the teen animadores but the person in charge is a really, REALLY young Salesian sister. She was so amazing!

So far everything has been pretty good here in Bolivia. I do think about home sometimes, but I try not to because I don’t want to miss it so much, and miss everyone so much, that’ll it keep me distracted on what I need to do here. I’m still working on that. But what really keeps me going is living in the moment here in Bolivia, because that’s all you can really do. Also, praying helps me a lot. Praying for people back home, and praying for strength to keep going. The Lord is really my strength and my best friend in this journey.

Keep praying for me, so that I can keep going, and I will be praying for while I’m on this journey.

I apologize if my writing is not the greatest. I’ve never been the best writer, especially because I’ve never really enjoyed it. And I still don’t, lol. But I do hope you enjoy these blogs at least a little bit. Sometimes they are hard to write, and I really never thought they would be. But I will keep writing these just to keep you informed. Chau! And may God bless you all.