But seriously??

Don't hate me for looking at the American Airlines website to see how much it would be to change my flight.

I would leave tomorrow if I could. I'm so over it.



P.S. Good news. Elizabeth and I got into a townhouse for the spring. This is good because we're been stressed because we had nowhere to live before. Yay.

Much needed pictures...

These are not at all in order and we're gonna pretend that that doesn't bother me, ok?

So here is our Thanksgiving feast that I insisted on having:
Todo la familia:

Us girls being crazy after dinner:

Dyed my hair again:

Me and Eva:

Me with my beautiful Christmas tree that I decorated:

A nice view of the city:

My pretty tree again:

The Thanksgiving box my mom sent me!:

Ready for Thanksgiving!:

Billy, David, Kristen, and I when I went to visit them in Parral:

Me and Eva before the quinceanera:

The cake:

Pyrotechnics? Yeah...it was a little eccentric.

Dancing with balloons, and the birthday girl, Daniela:

Almost Done

So...I've got less 3 weeks until I finally go home. 19 days to be exact. And I am sooooo ready. Not desperate, but just ready. And definitely excited.

I feel like I've done everything that there is to do. Most of the things that I wanted to do didn't happen and I've basically just stopped expecting anything other than learning Spanish to happen.

So yeah...I feel like I was a little mislead in the beginning, but I've just come to accept that I'm only here to learn Spanish. That's it.

So...anyway...I'll be home in 19 days. I expect a giant hug from all of you. :D

HOLIDAYS!!!

I mean let's face it. I love this time of year. We decorated for Christmas this weekend (at my request--they normally don't decorate) because it was a long weekend for the Mexican "holiday" celebrating the revolution. And I must say...I decorate a mean Christmas tree. It's pretty much beautiful. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and I'm super excited. One of Eva's friends drove up to Dallas for a conference and took a bunch of my stuff home for me, and she's bringing back a bunch of traditional Thanksgiving food that my mom made and tomorrow I'm skipping school and I'm actually gonna cook the rest of the big meal! We're going to have a feast! And there's like 8 people coming total I think. I'm so excited for my family here to try an American Thanksgiving feast! And supposedly it's gonna snow on Sunday?! Not sure if I fully believe it but...yay? And in 24 days I'll be home for CHRISTMAS!!! Ugh I loovvveeee the Holidays!

Sorry I'm not posting more often...I've been having computer troubles lately. Love it.

Oh p.s! I'm going to the Mexican Super Bowl on December 8th!! Hahaha....yesterday Eva was like...Hey do you want to go to the Super Bowl with us in December? And I was like...umm...I'm pretty sure the Super Bowl is in February... And she was like, No, it's the Mexican super bowl! So...there ya have it!

It's a little late...

I’m sorry I’m not keeping ya’ll updated more often. I’ve been super tired lately and the last thing I want to do is stay longer at school to blog. Forgive me.

I have a new teacher in the afternoons now. Her name is Pati and she’s got this crazy new-agey way of teaching. It’s hard to explain it so I’m not going to even try. I’m not learning new things, just learning to apply the things I already know that are hard for me. It’s been great and extremely helpful, but it’s insane how exhausting it is. Mainly because it’s in the afternoon and my brain is always just dead in the afternoons. I can’t ever concentrate after lunch. All I wanna do is sleep. So it’s been a challenge because this new way of teaching is real intense and I really have to be thinking hard the entire 2 ½ hours. But I’m enjoying the challenge seeing as I feel like I haven’t used my brain at all in a few weeks.

To add to my exhaustion, I’ve been running every morning at 6:00 with Eva in La Deportiva (the Central Park of Chihuahua). It’s really amazing to wake up and start running when it’s freezing and still dark, and then watch the sun rise over the mountains and stretch warm orange streaks along the grass through the trees as my breath lingers visibly in the cold air. And the cooing of a billion pigeons is almost overwhelmingly soothing. I actually really love it. But damn it’s early. And 2 laps around the Deportiva takes 40 minutes.

I realize the more I live here that we really are in the high desert. Although it’s cold enough for me to see my breath in the morning and to bundle up before heading out to run, in the afternoon I find myself sweating while walking to the bus stop in a t-shirt and jeans. What’s that about?

I went to Parral last weekend to visit 3 of my JBU friends who are teaching English there at a Christian school. I really loved being there. I took the bus, by myself (a huge step for me here in Mexico) 3 hours south. I found the small city of 100,000 quite charming. It was much smaller than Chihuahua and had much more hills and cerros (as they call them in Spanish—basically giant hills). We walked EVERYWHERE. Sometimes half an hour just to get to one place. I took a taxi for the first time in my life and got over that fear. It was really great to be there and have a weekend of fellowship with people who understand where I’m coming from, and whom I can talk to in English. It was really fun too because all 4 of us are bilingual and so most of the time we’d switch the conversation back and forth between English and Spanish. Now that I think about it—that’s pretty cool to be able to do. I was also told by multiple people that my accent is amazing. Maybe because they’re used to hearing Spanish with an American accent from Kristen, Billy, and David…cuz people never tell me that here. I spent the weekend battling envy because the 3 of them have such a great community down there. Billy was telling me that he doesn’t really miss being at JBU because his JBU community was replaced with his co-workers and friends from church (the school is connected to the church). Which explains why I miss JBU so much. I don’t have a community down here… I stayed 4 days and came back Monday night, a little sad to be leaving. But I actually caught myself thinking, “It’s good to be home…” when I arrived back in Chihuahua. Weird. I’ll be going back to Parral in 2 weeks hopefully. And who knows….maybe I’ll end up teaching there too in a couple of years. They’ve already offered me the position…ha. J

Well…I’ve saved this for the last paragraph because I know you’ve all been anxiously awaiting what I’m about to say. I regrettably inform you that the orphanage thing is not working out. Perhaps this is why I’ve delayed so long in replying. I haven’t heard a word from them. Granted, I haven’t tried calling them. Mainly because the day I left, when I talked to Mama Rosy, it seemed by the tone of her voice that they didn’t really need me there (which is hard for me to understand because what orphanage with 120 kids and only 8 on staff doesn’t need more help?) I’ve been praying heavily about what to do with the rest of the semester and I’ve come to my conclusion: God brought me here to learn this language. To do language school. And that’s what I’m gonna do all 16 weeks. Seeing as I feel like I tried all semester to get into an orphanage and then when I do and want to stay there, they don’t need me—it would seem that the missions thing is not in God’s plan for me here. You can only do so much right? I’ve prayed about it fervently, and I just don’t feel led by the Lord to pursue it. Sorry. L Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s in His plan for me here.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because I always have to have a conclusion; I always have to make sense of things. How many times have I asked the question, “Why am I here?” I think God brought me to Mexico to get over Mexico. And by that I mean to get over the whole missions abroad thing. I’ve decided that the Lord calls people, strong, selfless, determined people to minister to strange and foreign countries abroad. I am not one of those people. Now I’m not ruling out the option of teaching English here or in another Latin country…I’m just saying that it’s equally as important for us to realize that God actually calls people to have “normal” lives and “normal” jobs in “comfortable” cities in the U.S. Where their mission field is not a tiny village in the jungle or secret underground churches of an Asian city, but the street they live in, or the floor they work on. Ya know? I’ve struggled with it in the past because I always perceived it as the “spiritually strong” people who got called to be missionaries—like if you weren’t called to be a missionary it was because you weren’t strong enough. And I always wanted to be that. But it’s just a matter of where God is calling you. There are just as many unsaved people wasting away their lives in the suburbs of America as there are in the ravages of third-world countries. And maybe it is an issue of comfort. But I’ve come to accept while being here that missions abroad is not where my life is headed. Granted short term mission trips are fine, but full-time…it’s just not for me. Since being here, for the first time in my life I’m actually extremely ok with the idea of just being a teacher or even working as a translator for some business. I’m ok with the idea of having a “normal” life. I just don’t have what it takes to live abroad for long periods of time. I think the Lord brought me here to come to that realization. I always made it out to be much more romantic that it is. I needed to get over it and realize that that’s not what He’s got planned for my life.

So folks, I’m dreadfully sorry to disappoint you, but I will be continuing my studies here in Chihuahua for the last 4 weeks of my time here, and will hopefully be fluent when I return home one month from today. After all…that was my main goal in coming here.

Wish I had more computer time....

So today I don't feel very well...that's what I get for spending my weekend in an orphanage with 120, smelly, dirty, wildly rambunctious, but loving kids.

I went to Lirio de las Valles early Friday morning and returned late in the afternoon on Saturday. When I came home I was EXHAUSTED and after showering immediately, I collapsed on my bed and slept for 2 hours quite solidly.

The orphanage was a big yellow, blue, and orange building out in the middle of real Mexico. Surrounded by mountains and miles and miles of orange dirt and scraggly, dried-up bushes, it is home to 120 kids from 3-18, 4 dogs, 4 goats, 5 gigantic pigs, and a cat. To my surprise, it was extremely clean, although in the evening (I slept on a bunk bed in a room with 40 of the youngest girls) I thought I'd never be able to get used to how rank it smelled. It seemed all the kids were extremely rough, which is understandable, but all extremely outgoing and loved me the second I stepped foot in the place. It felt a lot like camp to be honest, just a lot less structured, and with the kids doing all the work instead of the "counselors." There are 2 American girls working there for 6 months, Lauren and Mary Ellen. They're 24 and we got along really well. It was really nice to talk to someone my age in English. It was wonderful really. And I'm pretty sure I talked their ears off. During the afternoon on Saturday we spent about an hour trying to rid their closet of cockroaches. Yeah...it was pretty sick, but I had a lot of fun laughing and screaming with them. We got up at 6 on Saturday morning (which was "sleeping in"--normally they get up at 4:15) and I hung out with a lot of kids throughout my weekend there, had a few play with my hair, and after that I was pretty sure I had lice and would never be able to get a brush through my hair again. It was fun, and I fit right in. I was able to communicate with the kids perfectly and it was really encouraging. Right before I left on Saturday, a 15-year old girl randomly told me I have a Mexican accent. What a huge compliment! Seriously...

On Friday night, as I lay in the oldest, tiniest top bunk ever, I prayed real hard. The whole time I was there I felt such a feeling of right-ness. I don't know how to explain it. It's not like I had an amazing time or had tons of fun or anything, but I felt strangely drawn to that place. After a day, my heart was already breaking for those kids. It just felt like I was supposed to be there. And despite how rank it smelled and how many germs cover that place and how I couldn't ever stay clean, and how exhausted I was, I wanted to stay there.

I talked to Greg on the way out to the orphanage and apparently I'm at this awkward point in my semester where they don't really have anything left to teach me...and they don't really know what to do with me for the rest of the semester. As you can tell where this is heading...I'm thinking about going out to serve at the orphanage for the rest of the semester. My biggest goal/reason I wanted to come to Mexico was to serve in an orphanage. And spending my last 5 weeks out there would definitely satisfy that. I'm a little torn because I absolutely ADORE the family I'm with now. But let's face it...I'm real bored and REAL tired of being here at school and doing the same thing day in and day out. I'm more than ready to go home. But I can't for another 6 weeks. So...I'm praying for the orphanage--despite how breaking I know it will be.

My favorite little girl, Karely (half the girls have their heads shaved from a lice outbreak they had):
Their bus:
One of the girls rooms, getting ready in the morning:
Me and Ana, the most helpful, mature 10-year-old ever. Loved her.
Lauren and Jacqueline. The youngest girl, and quite possibly the cutest:
A bunch of the kids outside looking at pictures on Lauren's camera:
Andrea, the second youngest girl, the poster child for I-need-a-home:
Me and Ramon. Super super sweet challenged kid.
Me with a bunch of the kids.
The orphanage:
Hopefully you'll hear about more.

Red Head again??

So my "house mom" does hair (a fantastic plus to living in their house) and so on Monday night I went back to being a redhead.

Before (with Senora Salinas):After:
So that's fun. In other news, I went to Cuauhtemoc on Saturday (a city an hour and a half south of here) for Mennonite pizza. Unfortunately, it wasn't really worth the drive for how much it was talked up but whatev. It was a fun trip anyway. With Eva and 3 of her friends.

Eva and I have been walking/running every night in La Deportiva (it's basically like the Central Park of Chihuahua) and Tuesday night we got "Sabrosas!" yelled at us by the entire boy's soccer team from the University here as they ran past us. That literally means flavorful...just so you know. I won't lie...we liked it.

Last night was Halloween, but you never would've known it here. Except I did get pegged in the side with an egg last night as I was ordering from an Elotes stand on the side of the road. Apparently Halloween night in Mexico means let's all drive around like crazy people and throw eggs at innocent bystanders. It was really swell.

Tomorrow I'm finally going to the orphanage. I'm kind of scared...but it'll be good.

Next weekend I'm hoping to go to Parral (a city 3 hours south of here) next weekend to see Kristen Olsen. That'll be good to see someone from home. :D

And the NEXT weekend I'm going to El Paso with the fam for Christmas shopping!!!!!!!! I love Christmas! And I love El Paso because that means I can use my cell phone!! Yay!

So....if you can't tell, I'm really not in a writing mood so I'll try to update more later. Bye!