It´s been a while

You guys remember that song that was huge for a little while while we were in High School. Sort of a grundgish (sp) sort of song "it´s been a while since I could say.... that I wasn´t addicted" stuff like that, well my innocently written title suddenly brought back the shameful recollection that I liked the song. oh well. Anyways, for a long time now I have held fast to the rule that I need to respect my former self. That is, I need to respect the ideas, views, or ideas of what fun is, that I used to have, even if now I think it is stupid. I realized a long time ago that if couldn´t promis myself to respect (in the future) what I think today, then today will end up being pretty crappy and useless because I´ll always be worried about what a future, more intelligent (supposedly) perhaps more dignified me will think. If I don´t have respect for my formerself, my futre self might logically not have respect for my current self, and if I realize that, then why should me current self have respect for itself? So I promise to respect all of my selves... anyways.... This strategy has already benefited me. For example, when I was a little kid I thought that it was just downright disrespectful and stupid that my older brother sometimes went to peoples houses and TP´d them.... for fun. When I was in HS I learned that it was "cool" to do this very thing. I refused many an invitation to join in on this activity (which as a HS and with pure pressure and with the distorted but intelligent enough reasoning of my friends didn´t at the time seem so bad) largely on the basis of wanted to respect the strong opinions of my former self.

ok, enough of that, let´s get back to Guatemala, it´s been a while.

I just got back from MCC meetings in the city. It was a lot of fun to hang out wth the MCC team here. They are all a lot of fun and they are all very good people. I am constantly amazed at how different everyone on the team is, and yet how well we all get a long.
The highlight of our time was geting ready for our performance in a talent show which will be held at the regional MCC meeting in Nicaragua in January. I won´t reveal what it will be for fear of spy´s from SALTers in other countriçys in Central America who might read thsi and reveal the secret of what we are going to do. Suffice it tosay that it was a lot of fun.

It reminded me of the annual "talent" show which happens at my Penner sides Christmas gathering. I will miss that.

Anyays, we spent a lot of time talking about thefuture of MCC in Guatmala, values, and methods,. It was good. We also had a lot of fun, and for me it was just nice to be in a new place, get different food, and have a hot shower and room where the sunlight woke you up in the morning. My room in Carcha has a window, but it has no screen and it is not made of glass, but wood. So there is only light when it is open.

We also had a Christmas dinner which, being prepared by my former hostmom inthe city, was amazing. I also helped in hte making and earing of sugar cookies. We followed up dinner witha rousing game of pictionary. David Janzten, Beth peachy, and I won. I did bad drawing but twice I the first guess to come out of my mouth was correct, giving our team aneasy victory. One was Christopher Columbus ( guess as soon as I saw two little boats and what appeared to be a land mass) andtheother was Rocky Mountains. I have never played such an intense, hotly contested game of pictionary. THen we played the dictionary game which was also a lot of fun. Though I think we had a bad dictionary. I think in the first seven words no one guessed the correct definition, and it was because the definitions usually just sounded badly writen. I reminded myself of my dad with this entry for one word with the successful definition, "A man of unusual proportions" . My dad is not a man of unusual proportions, that just seemed to me like a very typical way that my dad might word the less politically correct, ¨that man is fat." Earlier that day we had also eaten pizza (it had been a while for me) and played soccer. Saturday we relaxed in theMCC apartment, went out to get coffee (I had gelato), I visited my former host family, made an excelent dinner, and hung outlate into the night talking, listening to David play his new guitar, and singing along. Very fun.


Now I am back in the office finishing up my project and wrking on getting ready for a Work and Learn team to come my way to Bezaleel in January.

oh yes, while visiting my host dad in the city he told me, ¨Ya casi no tenés accento gringo" or "you almost don´t have a gringo accent anymore" so that made me feel pretty darn good. Though I think in that moment I had been talking particularly well. I still stumble around sotimes when I am not sure what to say or how to say it. I am still, probably pretty much everyday, reminded that my vocabulary is limited, I need to get back to the books (maybe even with a dictionary) and continue learning vocab. I really want to learn higher level vocab. It wil be dificult here though because spansih is the second langauge of most people here too, andmost don´t read, so it will really need to be a conscious effort form me. Also my listening skills need to improve. They talk slow here and I am afraid that if I went to a faster speaking place I would ahve problems.

Anyways it is about time I go on and get home.

I think with Christmas season coming, thinking about all the traditons of my family and with people at Bethel College, I am entering a little bit of another period of missing home(s). I even kind of miss the whole commercial aspect of Christmas which has hardly hit Carcha. The cheesy Christmas songs that have nothing to do with Jesus and everything. It is all part of a season which I miss.

I did however, receive andelectronic Christmas card from Barry and Brenda Bartel and THE WHOLE BETHEL COLLEGE CAMPUS COMMUNITY. I thoght that was funny... thanks guys!! ok enough, fun, I actually did kind of appreciate it. I do feel apart of an extended Bethel community that is still worth something despite being so seperated. Thanks Bethel, you will always give me warm fuzzy feelings.

ok, I need to go

Jordan