my time in mexico - part two

so now i will spend some time exploring the idea that if you travel with a football, (and not one of those sissy american footballs), you will make friends with everyone.

one of the students on my team is on the soccer team at CBU. and he is a genius. he brought a football along on the trip. on the first day, within ten minutes of arriving at the airport, he had brought out his ball and begun kicking it around. sure everyone looked at us, but not in a 'what's wrong with them' kind of way. more in a 'man i wish i could play right now' kind of way.

even just walking around the streets of mexico city, the football was a way to start talking to people. they would see the ball and stop us and have a conversation. we met a number of people this way.

and the football made frequent appearances even after we had reached the worksite. if there was enough time to stand still, there was enough time to break out the ball and kick it around.

and when the guys we were helping to build saw that there was a football, they made sure that we had finished for the day with enough time to set up a makeshift goal in the middle of the street and play a quick game.

each day included at least some time with the football. but as the week progressed and the work on the houses lessened, more and more time was spent either just kicking back and forth or even putting together a game.

one day they even took us down to the local stadium and challenged us to a game. luckily we were split evenly with us and the locals on teams so they didn't beat us too badly. i think this was one of the hilights of the trip for most of us. sadly, by this time my cold had progressed so much that i couldn't join in. i was really bummed about this, but it did give me an opportunity to take a lot of photos.

near the end of the week when we were all exhausted, we had fun playing football with the children who lived at one of the houses we were working at. this was ilette almost making a goal. her little brother lalo was also playing, but didn't make it into this photo.

most of us who went on this trip do not speak much spanish. but as the week progressed i learned that football is the international language. when a football appears, strangers become friends and interactions happen without words. i think some of our most significant friendships happened and progressed because of that little sphere.

my time in mexico - part one

so instead of doing one boring mega-post about my week in mexico, i thought i would break it down into a series of posts with different themes. i thought i would begin with what we were there for...building.

our week began on monday morning with a bang. we were taken to the first house and told that we were going to help with the pouring of a concrete floor. now that wouldn't normally be a daunting task in a 600 square foot house, but we only had a small mixer and all the materials had to be moved by hand. we set up a system of sorts and got to work. some of us shovelled gravel into buckets, some of us shovelled sand into buckets, some of us helped heave the materials into the mixer, and some of us helped move the concrete into the house in wheelbarrows. it was hot, tiring, repetitive work. but in only 2 1/2 hours we had produced a floor. it was an incredible feeling of accomplishment.

after lunch we were taken to the next house and somehow mustered the strength to do that all over again. by the end of monday we had finished two floors.



tuesday morning we got up and felt how hard we had worked the previous day. but we were ready to do it all over again. we were taken to the third house and were ready to go. but the dirt subfloor wasn't ready and we had to make several trips out to a field to bring in dirt and then bring it into the house and tamp it down. and then we didn't have enough water. and then the mixer ran out of gas. things went a lot slower on tuesday, but we did manage to finish our third floor.

now that the construction was pretty much finished on all of the houses we were working on, the rest of the week was spent doing things like putting in windows and the door and painting and finishing the electric and plumbing and then cleaning up outside and putting in landscaping. we didn't have time to do this work on all three houses, so we concentrated most of our time on the house where the dedication ceremony was held on saturday.

here's the finished product. we were all proud of our work.

but mostly we were proud to have been a small part of building a house for someone who appreciated it probably more than we could ever understand. this house was for anna. we made sure we all took a picture with her.


it was an exhausting week, but we all enjoyed every minute of it. and we would all do it again in a heartbeat.

i'm home...again

this past week was so much more than i ever expected it to be. but i have so much to say about it that it will come in a series of future posts. besides, i haven't had a chance yet to sift through the 400-some photos that i took.

it's almost unbelievable that i had such a great time, considering i was sick the entire time. after one day in mexico city i had a cough, which quickly progressed into a major cold. i toughed it out until friday, but then relinquished to the fact that i needed to see a doctor. this was a huge step for me, because i usually don't go see the doctor even when i'm at home, let alone in another country.

the doctor came and checked out my ears and throat and such and declared that i had an infection. he prescribed three medications, and i was excited about the prospect of getting better soon. well, it's four days later, and i think i may feel worse than i did on friday.

my ears are plugged and hurt. (which created an almost indescribable pain on the plane this afternoon.) i have a three pack-a-day cough. and a substance resembling rubber cement in both color and consistency is coming out of my nose in prodigious amounts. oh, and i think i've come down with a case of eczema. when it rains it pours, right?

tomorrow i am going to the doctor. and for the first time i'm looking forward to it.

travel update

hello from mexico. i don't have much time, so this will be short.
this has been an amazing week so far. we've all had a great time building houses and practicing spanish and getting to know new people and playing spontaneous games of soccer.
but i have been sick since day one. it started with a cough and has progressed into the mother of all colds. i actually had to stay at the hotel and sleep all day today. bleh.
actually, several members of my team are sick. i think we are responsible for keeping all of the local pharmacies in business. please pray for us that we will feel better and that we will finish this week strong.

pre-departure

this has been an eventful day.

managing students calling me with last-minute crises.
filling out paperwork.
printing out itineraries.
meeting with students to talk about packing and such.
and all the while trying to do my REAL job.

i also had a student drop out of the trip today. i'm still trying to sort out how i feel about that. i'm really sad for her that because of things that probably weren't dire enough to keep her from going, she is not going to be able to have this amazing experience. part of me feels like i failed her as a leader. i really didn't see it coming.

but i'm ready to go.

i'd like to introduce you to some people...

this is my ISP team.
they pretty much rock my socks.
we're leaving this friday for our week in mexico. i'm scared and excited all at once. probably more excited than anything, though.
i think that i'm mostly just sad that after next week my time with these amazing young people will come to an end. they have blessed and taught me so much these past few months. i'm really going to miss them.



please pray that God does amazing things with us this next week. and that nobody drinks the water...

today

this morning micah and i got up with the sun to go out and take photos in the morning light. i really like the way the light looks in the evening, but there is just something fresh and magical about the light first thing in the morning. too bad seeing it involves getting up at an hour that i'm not normally very fond of.
micah had very specific places she wanted to go and things she wanted to photograph. one place involved walking back up the freeway offramp and onto the service road that runs into the hills next to the freeway. good times. but there were some spectacular fields of wildflowers, and it was totally worth the hike. i toted ALL of my cameras with me, but since they are all film, i can only show you the digital version for now.

i was really excited, because yesterday i got a new battery and a pack of film for my newest member of the camera collection and i was ready to try it out. it's my new polaroid 104 land camera. (thanks again jonathan!) mind you, it didn't come with a manual, so i had to use various online resources and one that micah has for a different land camera to figure it out. so i took it out and snapped a photo of the hillside. i waited the obligatory 60 seconds to peel away and see my photo, and was faced with this.

uh. ok.
as far as i can figure it out, i just didn't have the bellows pulled out all the way. live and learn. it's technically a mistake, but i really like how it looks.

so we got back to the house and i figured out what i did wrong and snapped this one.

i think my land camera and i are going to have a long and interesting relationship.

oh, and then we spent the rest of the day at the irish festival. we had a great time. i think it might have even been better than last year's.

tagged - ugh

ok, so i was also tagged to do one of these list thingys by elissa awhile ago. i would say that i've waited so long in order to be the last one, but it's really because i think entirely too much about everything. so here's my not-so-interesting list of random things about me...

1. i have twice in my life held a hummingbird. once when i was about 8, and then again around high school. i just happened upon them sitting on the ground, not looking too great. i walked up, put out my hands, and they climbed in and chilled out for a few minutes before flying away. i guess i have a way with birds.

2. when i was a kid i was really good at math and science. and i mean skipping several grade levels good. and i loved it. then in junior high something happened and i hated it. i'm still pretty good at math and am fascinated by science and am realizing that i probably should have been a physicist. oh well.

3. in college i worked in the computer lab with all the computer science nerds. they were only one step away from pocket-protector geekdom. they were - of course - all huge star wars fans and were super-excited when the special editions of episodes IV-VI were re-released. i went with them to see V and VI at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood, which also included spending several days sitting in line. yes. i was one of THOSE people who slept out on the sidewalk. and i have a copy of the LA Times to prove it.

4. i have never owned a car with an automatic transmission. i have no idea why. it just happened that way. and i always name my cars. my current car's name is cyril.

5. when i was in the 2nd grade we studied electricity in school and did cool experiments with circuits and stuff. they explicitly told us never to experiment with anything bigger than a 9 volt battery. so what did elizabeth do? of course she went home and found a light bulb and some wire and some sort of night light and did some experiments in the wall socket. i came away from that one slightly dazed, with blackened fingernails and a new respect for electricity.

6. i have really odd color rules for myself. i will never wear black and brown together, but black and tan is ok. except for denim, i never wear blue. which was difficult when i started working at CBU, since one of their colors is navy blue and i have to wear it at certain events.

7. when i was a freshman in high school - i think it was during spring break - i was home alone and in the shower when someone broke into our house. i still have a hard time taking showers when i'm home alone.

8. because of a combination of several severe childhood ear infections and a lifetime of insanely loud music, i have significant hearing loss. especially in my left ear. the ringing is actually so loud that some nights it keeps me awake. i have a really hard time picking out conversations when there is a lot of background noise. i've gotten pretty good at reading lips, but i get a little embarrassed when i have to ask people to repeat themselves a lot.

9. i think it was my sophomore year in college, i came home for the weekend to find my street filled with fire engines and various other civil-service vehicles. turns out our next door neighbor had several propane tanks in the garage that blew up. and they swore up and down that it wasn't a meth lab. yeah, right. luckily the inferno did not spread to any other houses and nobody died except their dog. (but it was actually a good thing for the dog. they didn't treat him very well. my dad actually once found it stuffed in our mailbox.)

10. i failed art class in high school. go figure.

my drive

my journey to and from work every day takes me up and down washington street. the fact that it is one lane in each direction and full of potholes should probably give me reason to avoid it, but i love the view of the mountain and the city spread before me on clear days. on mornings after it rains it literally takes my breath away. and i like how it makes me briefly feel like i'm out in the country. oh, and i love the orange groves.
i digress.
the brand of driver that seem to join me on my morning commute give me the impression that they are all communally on the way to a fire or some other sort of life-threatening situation. it is the only explanation i can come up with for going in excess of 60 mph in a 40 mph zone. i am tailgated almost every day by some sort of urban assault vehicle or luxury sedan. (i will also admit here that i usually exceed the speed limit, but never by much. maybe 5 mph. i can drive like a grandma.) there are a few points along the drive where the lane becomes inexplicably extra-wide, but is not technically another lane. many mornings these apparently stressed-out drivers take this opportunity to gun their vehicles into light speed and pass me by. (which always makes me roll my eyes and laugh, because i make a left turn within the next 200 yards.)
this scenario played itself out this morning as usual, but this time i mumbled to myself "why is there never a cop around to see this?" (this is not something that i would normally say, but i was pulled over in almost the same place for doing almost the same thing on valentine's day, but at 10:30 at night, to pass the only other car on the road, who was going literally 10 mph. my sense of justice was bruised.) but no sooner had the words left my mouth than a motorcycle cop whizzed past me with his lights on.
i admit that i spent the rest of my drive feeling enormously smug.

coffee

just one of the great number of fantastic things about portland is stumptown coffee roasters. they are a small group of people who take their coffee very seriously. but their coffee snobbery results in an amazing cup of joe.

on this last trip up to portland, i was delighted to learn that i could purchase my own bag of hand-roasted stumptown coffe beans and take them home. fantastic!

so we went to the nearest New Seasons Market and i dropped somewhere around $7 on a half-pound bag of holler mountain blend fair-trade, organic coffee beans.

i treated that half-pound of coffee beans as if they were more valuable than gold. i carefully doled out the beans and wasted not a drop of the coffee. i savored it. and it lasted me about a month.

i've spent the past couple weeks having an unbelievable craving for a cup of stumptown coffee. i've even contemplated taking a quick trip up there to visit alissa and bring home a few pounds of beans. (and then i realize how ridiculous it would be to fly to a different state just for coffee beans. even if it were disguised as a trip to visit my friend.)

but this morning i discovered that you can purchase their coffee beans online! for only $14 a pound, plus shipping, i can have a neverending supply of coffee greatness shipped right to my door! i am so excited.

why do i feel like such a yuppie right now?