A busy week for all

Our soccer team arrived last night and hit the ground running! They got in a few hours later than planned and finally got ready for bed at 1:30 this morning. They were up eating breakfast at 7:30 and then were out at the soccer field at 8:30 ready to go. The first morning was so successful! We talked to our Father 3 times as a whole group and even got to share a few of His words. I was so excited about that part! One of our friends is a translator, so he will be exposed to it all week! There are 19 people on this team, all of which have had experience in soccer. All of the students play or have played competitive soccer. We will start our "special" English classes tonight. It is only for our advanced students that we had the first two sessions. Tonight we are doing our own version of speed dating in class. We will be setting up stations for all of us to sit at, when a student comes to a station they will talk to the teacher at their station for a set amount of time. When the timer goes off they will move to the next station. Katie came up with enough topics for 10 stations. We are also excited to have the soccer girls helping us in class this week. We also get to act as tour guides for the team this week. Since we summer girls have become so familiar with our city, we are going to take them around in taxis to site see and shop. I don't know how regular my blogs will be this week, but hopefully I will get a chance to blog daily!
Thanks for all you do!

Finally a kind of sort of lazy weekend!

Well not much has happened this weekend. Which is a good thing after our busy week! Yesterday we slept in and then got a text asking us to come for lunch at our neighbor's house. We quickly got ready and headed across the street. We had a 3 course meal! We started out with a soup that was pretty much chicken noodle soup. For our meal we had a chicken casserole, french fries, rice, and peas and carrots. The peas and carrots presented a PROBLEM! I don't eat peas or carrots, never have! Except for the night I couldn't keep my mouth shut as a 7 or 8 year old about how gross I though peas were! So my Momma solved that problem by making me eat a WHOLE plate of them, or at least I remember it being a plate, she remembers it a little differently! I couldn't bring myself to eat them, so I had to return my plate with peas and carrots shuffled around it. After our main course we had a really good cake with a homemade apricot filling! We watched Step Up with our friends after lunch. Their "shy" 19 year old brother decided to come out from his hiding and watch the movie with us. The 3 siblings (two of which are the sisters that we have been hanging out with) were so funny when their Mom spoke English. She speaks very broken English so anytime she said anything, her children were very quick to correct her. Last night we had supper with our bosses' and their three kids, who finally decided to come back home!
Today we had a picnic in the center of the city. Our bosses think we are sad because we bought hamburgers from McDonald's to take on our picnic! We thought it was a genius idea! When we left McDonald's we headed toward the park, walking of course! We thought we would never make it to a suitable tree to sit under. Our 17 year old friend just wasn't happy with anything but the best for us. She told us 3 times it was just the beginning of the park as we kept asking how much further we had to walk with our McDonald's in tow!
We are excited because we have a team coming in tonight to lead a soccer camp for 100 kids in our city! We are supposed to be meeting them at McDonald's at 10:30 tonight so they can start their week off with an American meal! We really don't eat every meal at McDonald's as much as it sounds! Haha! This will be a busy week for us summer girls! We have soccer camp in the morning and then English class at night. Thank goodness the weather is not going to be as hot as it has been!
Thanks for all you are still doing to make this trip successful! Oh, Amy tell everybody at your office I said hello! Momma told me you read this to them every morning! Y'all need a little more excitement in your lives!

I don't know if you have noticed or not, but on the days I don't have much to say I post pictures! Tonight we had our American food party for our final night of this session. This class was far more comfortable with eating than our last class was! There were no brownies left and just a little bit of chips and dip. The chips and dip we had left we sent home with a student! For our dip we make it with Ranch dip seasoning packets. We brought them over with us of course!
It is hard too believe that tomorrow marks our halfway point. We have been here for five weeks. Intercede for us this week. The other two times I have traveled for the summer the first week and the middle week were the hardest. I guess its because you realize that half of the summer is gone, but then at the same time you are only half way through. Don't get me wrong, I am in no way homesick or counting down the days! I just know from experience that the enemy loves nothing more than to make us weary or to make us yearn for our familiar comforts at home. I know your thoughts would be greatly appreciated by us summer girls!!
I was glad to hear tonight that the GRACE team made it safely!

This is indeed her third run on my blog, but I don't think anybody is tired of seeing her cute face! She cried when her sisters went to leave home for class tonight, she wanted to come with them...smart girl! It was party night and she was more than happy to take home what was left of the Shokata.
The advanced English teachers with their American food feast. Brownies and chips and dip!

This is a group picture of both classes, minus two students. As you can see, we were heavy on the girls this week and we had SO much fun with them!
The advanced class plus an extra. No one minded her being there, she was so good. She just colored the entire two hours.

This is one of the really cool paddle boats we rented, yes that is a slide off the back! (Uncle Chris and Aunt Patty, you should check into these! Unfortunately, I don't think they sell them in Missouri!) Our fun loving 10 year old neighbor/friend/student has the appropriate colored red hair! As you can see she has quite a fiery personality!

Our brave train riding group. I don't know what the red-head is doing, we never know what is going to come out of her mouth! Here's a funny story for you about her. The day we rode the train she decided she was going to be "The little English girl". She declared she would only speak English for the day! She does speak it VERY well. We went into a souvenir shop to look at t-shirts and I needed her help translating. I asked her to ask the cashier how much a t-shirt was, she looked at the cashier and said in her best English "How much is this?" and walked away!! I just looked at her and laughed! I had to get her sister to help translate because she refused saying "I told you, I only speak English!"

We were the only ones smart enough to get these fresh, chocolate pastries for breakfast. Everyone else was quick to taste them though! :) If only I could bring a dozen of these home!

The amazing country side on a foggy morning. Once again no desert Mrs. Diane, sorry! Although it looks nothing like this in the capital city where we live.

Trying to make sure we took pictures of everything we did that day! This is us, minus one, riding in our box seat (there were 2 rows of seats facing each other in each box). I don't know if you have noticed yet, but I have quickly become European in my make-up wearing! Most women wear little, if any, make-up over here, so I have decided to join them in the past couple weeks. I don't think I'll ever go back to being a steady make-up wearer again!

Katie teaching about giving directions on a homeade poster. We gave them two locations on the map and they had to give the directions on how to get from one place to another.

Our rule that we constantly have to remind our classes of the first week. By the second week we rarely have to remind them, probably has nothing to do with the fact that chocolate is involved! Mr. Wilson and Dr. Hornsby know how well I can bribe a class! Haha!

This is the life!

Today has been the best day of my trip so far! It is probably going to forever be in my top ten days of my life! Today, we marked off another assignment in our "Amazing Race". Our assignment was to ride a train into a tiny city and kick it for a while. Our bosses gave us no to do list once we got there! Once again, they think they are real smooth!! We decided as soon as we got the assignment list that there was no way we could do some of the things without the help of our national friends. This assignment was one! We started off this morning with three of our friends in tow, I won't lie it did start off a little rough at 5:30 a.m.!! A time I never wanted to see again after my student teaching was over! :) 5:30 came a lot sooner than any of us had hoped. Once we finally made it to the train station, it was touch and go there for a minute trying to find what train to hop on and what time it came with three languages being talked at any employee we could find. The train ride was so neat, it was my first time to ride a train. After about an hour we arrived in our city. There was one strip of stores and restaurants through the middle of the city and a lake. When we got off the train, people kept stopping our friends to ask why we were there. I told my Daddy it would pretty much be like a group of Europeans flying in to Mobile and then going to Dauphin Island to see the beach (a small island with so so beaches good enough for us that live on the coast, not a big tourist attraction for those of you who aren't from the coast) instead of driving an extra hour or so to Destin. There is a big tourist area in another part of the country, with a lake, where everyone goes. But when we got to the smaller lake we knew we had come to the right place! We had the entire part of the lake where we were to ourselves! We rented two paddle boats to get to the middle of the lake so we could swim. The outsides of the lake are slimy and grassy. The cool thing was the paddle boats had slides off the back of them! We had so much fun. Our friends then had the idea to paddle across the lake to a hotel's private beach, promising we would be able to use their beach. I didn't believe them, hotels at home don't let you. This hotel did, they even welcomed us to swim in their swimming pool...for FREE! We were there for about three hours, long enough to swim away all of our energy, get sunburned, and eat pizza for lunch! Needless to say, after finally making it back to the train, our ride home was much quieter than the ride over! Haha! On the way home one of the 15 year olds kept telling us how much fun she had throughout the day. When we got to class an hour later, she told Katie and me she felt like the day had been a dream. The swimming pool alone was enough to set their heads spinning with excitement, then add a train ride, paddle boats, and a little bit of purse shopping to the mix.
This crazy week of going has been fun, but I am happy to know that we have only one assignment left! We have not had a down day in more than a week. We will also be happy to see our bosses come home Saturday! We have been the only Americans in our neck of the woods for a week now!
I hope all of you have a great Friday. I am thinking about all of you who are heading out tomorrow morning for Guatemala! I am also more than a little jealous! Bro. Teddy, you better get my blog to my Daddy while y'all are there! If y'all go to Casa, be sure to give Joey and my brother from another mother Josue a hug from me! I would appreciate it! Have fun at the packing party!

Not much going on today.

Well there really isn't anything exciting going on in the lives of us summer girls today. We did have to complete another mission on our "Amazing Race" list. We had to ride the bus route from one end to the other. Last night we decided to get up early to try and beat the heat! We got to the bus stop at 8:30 am, record timing for us to be anywhere here! We thought we had beat the heat at first, but then it found us at about 9:00. When we got home at 10:30, we ran to our bedrooms to take naps!
Tonight will be an early night for us. We have to be at the train station at 7:05 tomorrow morning! We are going to a small city, where we have been told there is nothing to do! There is a man-made lake there that we hear we may be able to swim in. We are anxious to see this city! Two of our friends are going with us, so we are excited about that!
There are new pictures below. Sorry there wasn't much excitement in today's episode! (Especially to Mrs. Diane Bryant!)

This is one of the many Mosques in our city. The tall tower is where the call to prayer is given 5 times a day. You can't see them, but in the middle of the tower there are speakers, so the men can hear the call. Every Mosque gives the same call.
Our early morning bus riding assignment. We had to catch a bus, ride it all the way to one end, get off and catch the same number bus to ride to the other end. Can you tell mine and Jessica's smiles are fake! :) It was too early for picture taking!
This is the closest bus stop to our house, sorry its just the sign.
The sunflower seeds that you eat everywhere you go. They are usually not mixed, we just mixed them in the popcorn bag because they come in paper cones (which aren't too stable).

Our friends and us hanging out at the park!

In front of the City of "Sorry, can't tell you" Museum, haha! The big jar thing is something they dug up at the fort here in town.

Just one of the many entertainers at the concert Monday night.

The faithful fire department here. Some grass had caught on fire on the side of a cliff. What you really can't see is that the driver is smoking a cigarette! Guess you get your break here no matter what!