Meghan은 간다, Meghan ya no esta aqui

It´s been awhile.

I don´t seem to write as much these days. Maybe it´s because I´ve done this all before and it´s not quite such a new experience as the last time I did this!

Today there are no kids at the center, and so we have a three day weekend. The three teachers (Brigida, Genoveva, Leonor) have all gone to Tijuana for a free Christian teachers´ convention. Without teachers we can´t have kids. Stephanie offered, jokingly, to watch them, saying ¨Yo puedo¨ (I can), but I definitely said ¨no puedo!¨.

Because we have no kids today, we invited over our sisters, Luvia and Sarai, to spend the night at our house. We planned out what to do, and as we did it last night I realized it was so American... exactly what we would do if we were at home. We went out for pizza at Tico´s, rented a movie, and slept. Sounds like a night in with the girls at home! It was really nice, though. We sat around Tico´s talking about their work, when they pick strawberries, and we found out that it would be very easy and possible for Stephanie and I to work with them on a Saturday. It turns out that some other youth from the church also work with them. They said it´s a lot of fun because their friends are there, and they joke around, and talk a lot. We thought we would need papers, or some sort of permission from the boss, but they said no. So! The next Saturday they work (work all depends on the ripeness of the strawberries), Stephanie and I are going to go and do it as well. I don´t know how well I´ll like it, bending over all day.. but I think having friends there as well will take my mind off of it. I´m very excited to do this, and I know Stephanie is as well. I guess it feels like it´s one thing to know what the working conditions are like, but to experience them is a whole different thing.

We bought candy and rented Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. We decided to be nice and watch it in Spanish with English subtitles-- that´s a lot of work! yeesh.

Wednesday night at church we went around telling all the youth that we were going to play futbol again, so we´ll see who actually wants to play tomorrow. Our plans for the rest of the weekend aren´t that great. Luis wants a myspace, but needs help making one, we´re going to go to the globos in San Quintin because we´re both going to learn how to embroider from Leti, the pastor´s wife. Now our Sundays seem to be beach days, though last Sunday it was really hot and we only stayed for an hour or so.

Today we´re planning on cleaning and cleaning out our little apartment. There´s a lot of stuff that has just accumulated over the years. Hopefully we can make it a little better.

I just finished reading America and Americans by John Steinbeck. It´s a collection of non fiction of his over the years. It includes essays for magazines, war journalism, and essays for overseas newspapers. At the end are a collection of essays entitled ¨America and Americans¨, about us as a people and a land. It was such a good read. What he wrote 40 years ago still seems true today, and maybe even more amplified. I highly recommend it. More and more I am admiring Steinbeck not just for his ideas, but his simplified way of observing people and his ability to relay that without pretention.

posted by Meghan @ 11:55 AM