7-19-10

So after a week of recovering I can now say that I am feeling better, not perfect but definitely better than before. We got back from the states on Tuesday mid afternoon and so I had the rest of the day to get settled in. Walking into the door and seeing Melissa and Elizabeth was sooo nice. Even though taking a little vacation in the states was nice I sure did miss my ninos and my roommates. Wednesday I usually work but instead I went to Ensenada with Alison, Elizabeth, Melissa and the group. The group was taking their touristy day and invited us to go with them. We went to the Bufadora which is a blow hole. Let me tell you it sounds a lot cooler than what it was. To get to the Bufadora you have to walk through the market where you are constantly bombarded by Mexicans wanting you to come in their shop and buy their stuff. Melissa, Elizabeth and I went off by ourselves and walked through the tourist place and I am pretty sure we got called Barbie about ten times then charlies angels and beautiful a couple more times. It got pretty annoying because we didn’t want really want to buy anything cause we did all our shopping for that kind of stuff the week before. So after we saw the Bufadora Melissa, Elizabeth, Alison and I went to a cool restaurant called Habana Cabana. That was the first time that I had real food since I had been sick so I was excited. After we ate we had to leave so we could get back to the park in time for our VBS. Our VBS has been going really well. We started out with only six kids and now have gotten a little over 20 now. We have 3 little kids that come every night and they are from an Indian tribe called Oaxacan. They don’t speak Spanish so at first it was a little difficult to explain things to them. The little boy who is 3 though knows the most Spanish and the other day out of nowhere starting rambling off in Spanish … we were so excited. The sad thing about the three little kids is that they most likely won’t be able to go to school because they don’t have birth certificates. To go to school here you have to have a birth certificate and if you didn’t get one when you were born you have to buy one. Birth certificates are pretty expensive so they most likely wont be able to afford it.
Thursday was my first day back at work and it was awesome. I walked in and Lety was there waiting for me and gave me the biggest hug ever. It was so nice seeing all the kids again. It has gotten a lot hotter since I had been gone. The kids got out the pool and were playing in it when I got there. It was Elizabeth’s day off so it was just me and Melissa there. We ate outside then the kids went right back into the pool. Then out of nowhere it started to rain or should I say pour. It was weird because it does not rain in the summer so this was a big surprise for everyone. Me and Melissa then decided it would be fun to play in the rain so we got the kids and played in it for hours. The cook, Maria, told me that I should not be playing in the rain because I was sick. I thought about it then I decided I didn’t care because playing in the rain sounded way too much fun. I then went to the shed and got out the slip and slide, I thought the kids would enjoy it a lot and it was a hit. By the time we were finished playing in the rain Melissa and I were absolutely drenched so we went back to the house for new clothes. When I came back to the orphanage the group was there to play with the kids and say their goodbyes. They brought blankets for all the kids and had their names embroidered on them it was so sweet. Only one person in the group spoke Spanish so they needed my help for some translating. Gosh it’s so sad when I am their best help for translating haha. it was so entertaining though because there was this guy who thought that if he spoke English with a Spanish accent they would understand him better, it was so terrible to watch cause really he was just making a fool out of himself. Oh yeah I got more kisses from the creeper. He came up to me when I was at the park but I didn’t know he was behind me and he pulled me over and kissed me again. I was in shock at what happened so I got on my bike and rode away to get Phil and Alison haha. It is so weird and he is so creepy Phil said he was going to talk to Marcos (the pastor at our church) about it. He had a crush on the last intern from Illinois so who knows maybe it’s an Illinois thing.
So Friday came around and once again it was another wet day. Not because of the rain but because I got in the little baby pool with the kids. When I first got there all the older boys were in it and wanted me to get in with them. I didn’t really want to get wet so I said no pool today. Well I guess I thought wrong because thanks to Tia Zelena threw me in the pool. I was glad to be in the pool though because it was so stinkin hot out that was really nice to cool down. I ended up just playing with the kids in to pool for the rest of playtime outside. It was such a fun day. I am so thankful for the relationships I have with the Tia’s because we can joke around all day and it’s so fun. Zelena got the hose out and started spraying me so the war was on between us. It was great. We then bathed the kids and then put in a movie and ate dinner. It was a great way to end the day. When me and Elizabeth got off work we went home to get Melissa so we could go to the taco stand. It was so sad because I couldn’t eat that kind of food yet so I just went a long for fun. I can’t wait till next week when I can eat at the taco stand.
Saturday was soooo awesome. We went to el parque de ninos which is a water park/pool/zoo near porvenir. We didn’t know that we were going to el parque de ninos till Raquel told us we might need extra clothes for el parque (which means park). We just thought we were going to the regular park and we were thinking why on earth would we need extra clothes for the park then we realized we weren’t just going to the normal park haha. So we loaded all the ninos in the van and we were off to the water park. It’s weird because no one in Mexico has swimsuits haha. There was a couple of people that had on swimsuits but most people just had on t shirts and short some even had on jeans. We just played in the kiddie pool with all the little ninos but it was still so much fun. After we got out and got all the kids changed we went and looked at the animals. It was funny because for awhile it was just Melissa, Elizabeth and I looking at the animals then we saw the older boys coming over and we thought they were coming to look at the animals but really they were coming to get us because it was time to leave haha. How sad that the kids had to come get us to leave. So yeah that was a pretty successful day at el parque and to top it off we didn’t even lose a kid :) So after we got back it was time to bathe the babies the only problem was that we were down two tia’s which meant that me and Elizabeth were on our own for washing the babies. So while Elizabeth went to get the kids new clothes I undressed them all. By the time I got to the last child I was taking off his clothes and I got to his diaper and wow did it smell. For some reason this kid always has a poopie diaper right before bath time and it is sooo bad. I promise Mexican poop is so bad compared to American poop. Well anyway back to Mario’s poopie diaper. When I took it off it was sooo bad and there were like pieces of corn in it and I was so grossed out and I went to get wipes and they weren’t there. So I had to do it the Mexican way and wash his butt in the shower. Elizabeth and I successfully bathed all the babies and got them dressed we were proud.
Sunday nothing too fun happened or at least nothing I can remember. I had a stupid Spanish moment with one of the tia’s. Mario had another really bad diaper and I remembered the corn from yesterday so I tried telling Kati about it. I mixed up my words so instead of saying that Mario had corn in his diaper I said that he had a tree in his diaper. Kati just looked at me then went back to washing the babies. She seemed really confused and then I realized what I had said and I quickly corrected myself. We then died laughing at how I had mixed up my words. After work we all went to the local pizzeria to get have our first pizza since being down here. Since there were four of us we got the grande pizza. It was huge but we devoured it. when we got home we put in a movie but Melissa and Elyssa (the new intern) went to bed. By the time the movie ended me and Elizabeth were still not ready to go to bed so we stayed up talking and looking at the map puzzle we have till 2:30am. When we were looking at the map we were picking out what country we wanted to start our orphanage in. We decided Ghana was our best bet because they speak English haha. Melissa and Elizabeth started working on the details for our orphanage haha. Melissa is going to be the person that does the laundry, Elizabeth is going to be the cook and I am going to be in charge of the kids. Elizabeth has already started on her recipes of snakes and poptarts its pretty great lol.
Monday was my day off so I got to sleep in. I did a little cleaning before Melissa got off. When Melissa got back we decided to do something with our lives and go play basketball at the park. We played around for a little bit then the little Oaxcan kids showed up so we got to play with them for awhile. It really made my day that we got to hang out with them for a little bit. They are the most adorable kids and now that Lencho (the 3 year old boy) speaks more Spanish we can now communicate more! After VBS we went over to use the internet and then to our surprise of friends from church came over to hang out with us. We were so excited because we never had visitors before. We went back to our house and got all settled in when our new roommate told us it was too late to have people over. I was pretty annoyed not gonna lie because I have been here for over 2 months and this is the first time we have actually had friends come over. We have the perfect hang out house for stuff like that and its really hard because we all work till 8 so the only time we can have people over is late. So to please her we left and went and hung out at the park. We still had a pretty good time and it was really great to be able to hang out with other kids. I mean I love Melissa and Elizabeth but having other people to hang out with us is nice for a change. One of the kids name is Tatan and I have known him since my first week. He is fluent in English so he speaks spanglish with us and its awesome. Tatan learned his English from hanging out with the kids from the Ventana ministry. It has taken him four years but if you talked to him you wouldn’t even know the English is his second language. On our walk back home we decided that we should do something on Tuesday during the day since its mine and Melissa’s day off. We told them to just come over in the morning and we could figure something out.
So Tuesday morning came pretty fast and I was awoken by Melissa jumping on my bed telling me to get up and get ready for Tatan and Caleb because they were going to be here soon. I am not a morning person and I think she found that our really fast haha. soon after I rolled out of bed Tatan and Caleb arrived ready to go on our adventure. They asked what we wanted to do and right away I said I wanted to climb a mountain. They are all use to the mountains so climbing them never really crosses their mind. But since I am from Illinois where everything is flat I am so amazed by all the mountains. Since they couldn’t think of anything else to do they decided that we could go find a mountain to climb… I was soooo excited. We got on our bikes and started out on our adventure. It was a pretty long ride to the mountain and we didn’t really know where we could get access to the mountain because there is private property in front of all the mountains. Caleb told us to pull over and that we were going to hop a barbed wire fence and ride through a pasture. I just thought to myself how interesting this is going to be because I have never hopped a barbed wire fence lol. Caleb was the first one to go so he got himself and his bike over and then a car drove by so he hopped back over and stopped them. I didn’t really know what he was doing then but he ended up asking them if we can ride through their property because they have a gate and it would be a lot easier. The people had no problem with it so we followed them to their property. We were that much closer to climbing the mountain and I was so excited. We made it a little bit up the mountain and decided that it was a good time to ditch the bikes. It was definitely an adventure. There was no path so it pretty rough haha but I was so excited I didn’t even care that my legs were getting all scratched up. Halfway up the mountain Tatan said he was hungry haha it was a little too late to say that because we were definitely not turning back. So we finally made it up the mountain and I was so proud that I could finally say that I climbed the mountain. The trek down the mountain was so much easier because we found a path haha. Halfway down I realized that I was getting fried and I had no sunscreen. By the time we made it to our bikes I was soooo red and ready to head back and go to Esmerelda’s for some hamberguesa’s. that was definitely my funnest day off I had ever had and it’s kind of a bummer that we just now started to really hang out with other kids when we’re going to leave in less than 2 weeks. After VBS Elizabeth, Melissa and I decided that we wanted to make a fort so we pulled out the blankets and chairs and started to work on our soon to be awesome fort. We were total kids but we had a good time. While Elizabeth and Melissa constructed the tent I was in charge of making the hats, rules and decorations. So after a lot of glitter, construction paper, paper towel rolls and blankets our fort, hats and telescopes were complete. We then ate tortillas and had a tea party in our tent. It feels so nice to be a kid sometimes. I am definitely going to miss my awesome roommates way too much :(