reality is sinking in.
the impossibility of leaving this coutry in two years and seeing change
the difficulty of the lifestyle I need to take on
and the general exhaustion of working with youth
they all smacked me in the face today
i need to feel loved
i ask for love to fuel my work
-youth group last night was rough. Due to the holiday weekend every 'carpenteria' and 'ferroteria' was closed. I could not find a window screen for the life of me in Chaclacayo after class. I needed a screen because we had planned to teach the girls paper making at 5:30; 4:45 rolls around and I still have no screen. So I hopped on a 'comvi' -'over-crowded bus' to go to the nearest superstore in Chosica. There was no screen to be found. I took too the streets and asked every kind eye I saw about an open 'carpenteria' or 'ferroteria' in Chosia. Keep in mind that everything here is locally owned. Every shop is connected to a house, and there is no such thing as posting hours of operation. Everyone I met was convinced I was not going to find anything open. At 5:15 I stumbled around the open market and was brainstorming alternate activities when I was lucky enough to find one! The owner of the shop was a sweet older woman fluent in quecha and spanish, and a younger man she was trying to sell to me more than her products. Ronald (the young man) was AMAZINGLY helpful and actually built me a wood frame with screen to fit my needs exactly. His determination to be precise was not something I could take for granted at the moment; I didn't rush him and watched the clock tick while the sweet owner taught me quechua.
I returned (through holiday traffic and another comvi ride) 45 minutes late to youth group with very excited adolescents. My awesome counterparts had taught them some 'dinamicas' on the spot that kept the girls occupied until I arrived. It was a huge challenge to get my exhausted body up to their level, but the girls had fun and loved the paper project. Half way through, my house mom came outside with a worried eye that the blender shouldn't be used for the paper anymore. With utter exasperation and every ounce of politeness that has ever been instilled in me I cut the project in half. But, I have to say, the girls went home happy, and I went to bed at 9pm.
This is a perfect example of what I anticipate is coming. Things working out very differently than expected, but turning out alright in the end.
The best part of this story was while wripping paper and chatting the girls were flowing with ideas of what we could do the next week. Then the decided they wanted to meet more than once so they could do more than one project. Then they decided they wanted to meet three times so they could go to the pool too. I am proud to say that I actually had to tell them we couldn't meet as many times as they wanted. I am so blessed to have such an excited and motivated group of kids. My counterparts and I agreed that we could meet Saturday as well as Thursday. The girls want to pick up trash in the neighborhood. Who can say, "no" to that?!
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