The Sanson and Delila video from Kids Comedor. :)

Hello All!

For those of you I've talked to while in the border line.. this is probably what I was looking at.. this is less than a mile of road that takes about 2 hours to drive through.. yuck.

This is my roommate Becky rockin out in our living room on our NEW COUCHES!


Here's Matt (bottom) and Carlos, Carlos won this tshirt for us at a concert.. I'll post some video of it on another post in a minute.. but check out this tshirt. It supposedly says now and for some reason has an american flag. Oh AND it smells like hollister. Weird.


These are pics of the area around our house. You can see El Paso and El Asarco..


The building with the yellow bars on the windows is our house. Not a good pic yet but I'll get more tomorrow.

I am a happy girl today. God is so incredible, so good and faithful. This week has been nuts and already its sunday... yikes! Becky and I have been house sitting for our missionary friends at night and they get back today. Our first week of ministry site stuff somewhat starts today. I am heading to the orphanage early in the morning tomorrow to try and catch the director and talk to her about what I could be doing there with them.. Today Becky has her dinner in El Paso for the folks from her church. Matt and jaci are spending the day in El Paso but I am not heading over til later this afternoon. I am going to take the day to catch up on office work, sleep and phone calls. I'll be glad for a day to myself some.. Not that I don't adore my roommates :)

Gloria A Dios!

I feel like a human for the first time in three or four days. Hurrah! I had a good day yesterday. Woke up feeling quazi yucky but had some breakfast, went to church at La Puerta with Becky. Came back afterwards to find Jaci and Matt with our two "new" couches from Savers in El Paso. Hurrah! The couches that were in here were sickdude.. like dust mites and God knows what else. Now we have nice clean new to us couches. :) Afterwards we did some bumming around before heading to site two for church. That was a blast for me. I hung out with Eileen all night talking about whatever.. messing up miserably in spanish, and watching the dudes/becky play soccer. It was a lot of fun. We came home and Becky and I played our first game of Phase 10. I might be addicted. I lost but I liked it :) Things are settling in here. We are leaving in about a minute to head to Site 4 again to talk to the pastor there about his ministry and school, then off to Site 5 to Mujer a Mujer (women's shelter) and to check out the orphanage (thats what I am interested in). We only have one more ministry to check out after this but then we will be figuring out out for sure schedules.

Well I am off on a new day.. with new intestines, new couches, and new hopes.

Sorry I haven't posted much. Things have been pretty busy, then I got the stomach bug this weekend so I have been fighting off mama mexico. yuck. I am off to church now too so I'll post later but here is a link to where my pics will be on facebook:




http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2065004&l=a4c9a&id=54600030

First Week.

Things are going well here in Jtown. This week we have been visiting ministries and looking around to see what types of things we might be interested in doing.. I am still not quite sure what exactly I'll be doing but I am pumped about a few of the different things I have seen going on. There is a ministry down here similar to Eternal Threads that is looking to start a website.. I was thinking about figuring out how to sell via a blog because they can't afford to pay for a legit website.. well there's a guy working on one but he won't be done for awhile and I think I can figure something out with a blog and paypal.. but who knows.. I'll ask around and see what people I know are doing... maybe I can hook them up.

Well its nap time.. tired.

Alive in Juarez

Hey yo!

So things are going well and I promise I'll update more but our internet isn't working at the house so we have to go all the way to el paso to check/update email. It will be up soon I promise. We got into Juarez this past saturday.. I missed everyone but I am still adjusting to the realizatioon I'll be here for a year.. hurray!!

Adios!

Well.. tomorrow morning is the big day. I leave for my internship tomorrow morning. I'll be in Minneapolis around 10:30 tomorrow night. I am staying with Nachelle for the night, along with Brenna then we start training stuff on Sunday. I am only slightly worried I won't be able to carry all my crap. hahaha.. oh well.. I'm tough.. :) I don't know exactly when we'll be heading to Mexico but it will be in a week or so I assume. I still have a lot of reading to do before sunday but I'll have plenty of time on the train. I am super excited to tell you that Nasser is moving to Juarez/El Paso so I'll have another friend in the area. I am excited to have another "brother" there.. he's been a good friend these past few years. Speaking of friends, Daniel heads off on his wild bike ride with his dad this weekend. I haven't really heard from him this week but it looks like he's planning on going off the grid for the trip so I am not surprised. He'll definitely be in my prayers, I think God has big plans for this trip!!

I was an idiot the other night. I watched bordertown. The JLo movie about the murders in Juarez. DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE IF YOU CARE ABOUT ME AT ALL OR YOU WILL PANIC. hahah.. no it is about the factory worker serial murders that have been going on since the nineties.. doesn't really apply to me.. I won't be on buses, working in maquilas or really ever be anywhere alone like an idiot. Still it reminds me why big cities sometimes make me nervous.. for some reason I can handle the slums in mexico way more than I can handle urban chicago. I don't know why. I think I've been conditioned to see their desperation and choices differently. I was reflecting on this a little bit. I think of urban american cities, inner city violence etc as an evil/violent/angry scary... but when I think of the slums in Mexico I just think of families trying to get by with no opportunity, no light, no hope. I don't know why they seem so different.. it is the same systematic oppression, the same pipeline to poverty to prison cycle just with a different language, a different slang and under a different regime. An eye opening realization.

Duh.

So I have a hard time going into stores where people are paid on commission. You know what I mean... So is this what you want? I think you need this? You would enjoy this, this, this, and this too! Foot tapping so they can get on to the next "big fish". Yuck. I would despise that job and I get super tense when I just need to sit stare and think for an hour before making a choice..

This is what happened to me the other day. I went in to REI to buy a backpack.. I knew I wanted an internal frame pack, nothing uber fancy, something on sale preferably, I had about 150 bucks to spend and it was labor day so things were on sale. I didn't know how to size them so I needed one of those sales people but man was he a turd. No thats too much.. he was just annoying. He gave me three options.. ultralight, deluxe or the travelpack thing that I hated. I was thinking ultralight anyway so I grabbed that one.. he said I needed a medium.. handed me a small to my dismay when I got home and I ran to the front. He just kept standing there and asking me about where I was traveling, how, why, and if I had done it before. Yucking it up while I was trying to think. Didn't let me ask questions or ponder.. just kept talking and pressuring. Ugh. Typically I already know what I want and don't want when I go into situations like that.. but whatever..he was doing his job.

So now I am going back to REI.. to switch it out. I haven't decided if I want to get the same one or a different one. Man.. this is why I need a constant wingman.. hahaha.. or wingwoman.

Sup.

So I am starting a blog about this next year.. but I'm not making it public.. I love you all but its just one of those things.. hahah.. I already want to delete this blog.. but it is sort of fun to see how much of an idiot I was 4 years ago, and how much of an idiot I still am, the ups and downs. It's weird to think people could judge me on what stupid decisions I made 4 years ago.. or yesterday. but still it feels like hiding from those decisions if I delete it.. anyway.. God is doing some awesome things with my heart and ive been on the road to making some pretty substantial decisions... I think this year is a big part of it.. so I wanted to start fresh.. it isn't just another day or another experience.. but possibly the start of something new.. so I'll keep this ol regular blog.. but start with the new a bit as well.