Dinner and a Movie

Since my last update, I have been doing fairly well, although a little tired. Wednesday and Thursday were quite busy at Nasareth, with soccer practice from about 1:30-3:30 both days, after which we returned to the house for afternoon snack. After snack, we then headed out to play ultimate frisbee for roughly an hour and a half. Since I was playing both soccer and frisbee with the boys, I ended both days feeling exausted, but happy to have had as much physical activity as I did. The boys, of course, loved doing both sports and ended each day with significantly more energy than I.

On Wednesday, I also had the great pleasure of dropping off a large bunch of Ultimate Frisbee discs at Nasareth. The boys were very excited to finally get them, and thought that the designs on them were quite cool. They were also excited to play with the new discs (on Wednesday and Thursday). I'm planning on organizing a tournament among them, and the members of the winning team will each get to choose their own disc. Most of the boys have already picked the design that they will choose when they win, so they're quite excited about the upcoming tournament. I must also send a big "thank-you" to the wonderful people at The Internet Disc Shop, who provided me with a great deal on the discs, since it was for the home.

Friday was also tiring, in a good way of course, though this time due to extra activity at CAT. We took all of the kids to a nearby park to play for the morning, and it was a lot of fun. I climbed a tree and then some of the kids got to sit up in it with me, we played on the slides and swings, raced, wrestled in the grass, and even did something akin to jousting using some rubber, air-filled and bouncy donkeys. It was a great morning, with the staff and the kids all having a great time. Since they're still on winter vacations here, the staff are hoping to be able to do this at least once a week. Also, the kids really had a good time taking a car (small pickup, actually) to the park, despite the fact that we could have walked. While I'm not usually one for dumping extra emmissions into the atmosphere, riding in a car was a rare and exciting chance for some of these kids, and they quite enjoyed it. (Besides, the car ran on natural gas anyway.)

Friday afternoon I didn't get to do much with the boys at Nasareth, since they were doing a full cleaning of the house. However, Friday night they were all very excited to be coming over to my house. I ordered pizza, 3 massive ones to be exact—roughly 70cms (or 2'4") across—which they very excitedly ate. Despite the fact that they had just eaten pizza on Tuesday night for a despedida (goodbye party) for two volunteers, they were still very happy to eat it again. A few boys even had as many as 5 slices! (I also ate my good share, of course.) After the pizza, I turned off the lights in the "boardroom" and we all got to watch Prince Caspian, projected onto the wall giving it a "big screen" effect. The boys all loved the chance to come see my house, to eat pizza, and to see the new Narnia movie, and so the night was a big success. In fact, John and I are hoping to be able to do it again another Friday sometime before I go, which should be exciting.

Friday, I have to admit, was also a bit of a scary/odd day for me. Being the 27th of June, it marked one month to the day of when I will be leaving. I now have less than one month left, something I don't like to think about too much.

Saturday was a fun day with a bbq at my house in the evening. At the house were Ludwe (who helped cook and provided the bbq), Philipa, Lois, Connie (who's down here for 10 weeks as part of her Development Studies at Queen's), and the Tearfund girls, who had just got back from La Paz that morning. On the menu were two different cuts of beef, chicken breast and leg, sweet potatoes, yucca (a white potatoe-like root that is very popular in the tropical regions of Bolivia), and salad. We all ate quite a lot, and then spent a good chunk of time just talking, before finally sitting back to watch the movie A Good Year.

Sunday was another busy day. After church, Connie came over and we celebrated Canada Day in the afternoon. We are, of course, both aware that Canada Day does not occur until July 1st, but as I will be celebrating it with the team that is down here from Elevation (my church in Waterloo) on that day, we decided to celebrate it a little early. I also said goodbye to a woman named Linda who has been down here for the past few weeks, but am looking forward to seeing her again some time in Waterloo, where she lives. After celebrating Canada Day, I joined up with some friends at the Portugese service at Calama. Leaving the service, we went out for a late dinner, and then ended up catching The Hulk at the movies.

The only down point to the whole week has been that I am suffering from an eye infection. I have no idea where I got it from, but all Sunday afternoon/night, as well as this morning, my eyes were sore, itchy, and terribly red. However, I made my way to an eye doctor this morning, who, after explaining that I had a very bad but not serious eye infection, gave me some drops that are already making me feel much better, and orders to go see her again this coming Thursday. While she was very nice, I hope that it will be the last time I need to go see her.