Entonces....

Greetings to all! Today we had a big storm! It was awesome! We usually get a big storm about every couple weeks. I love the rain when it comes, its so refreshing and the cool air is very nice, it reminds me of the way God refreshes us when we need it.

Well I had a good birthday! It was definitely different and i still don´t really feel 18 yet. Saturday morning At 8:30 in the morning i went with the baseball team to play our first game. We went to a town about 30 minutes outside of San Juan, it was just into the mountains and there was a man-made lake there with a dam. We played on a field in a valley inbetween the mountains, at times there were cows and horses and pigs running onto the field. You know what that means, there were lots of cow-pows and such on the field, let me tell you, those were not fun running into. I only had 1 hit and we lost, but it was fun. I´m playing in some kind of league for kids, i still don´t really understand it but we didn´t have enough kids in our age group to play so we had to take a few kids from the younger age group to play with us. I think that was part of why we lost.

Saturday evening we went to the youth group, i was going to sing with the worship team, they wantd my help with a song in English (open the eyse of my heart Lord) but i had a sore throat so I opted out. DON´T WORRY! i´m sure i´ll have another opportunity to sing with them. Of course Tony being the youth leader called me up and wished me a happy birthday. Then the worship team sang happy birthday to me. It was fun and everyone was great. Tony and Larys bout me biscotcho (cake) but by the time we got home we were all so tired that we decided to wait until sunday to eat the cake. It was delicious!

The culture has really been a struggle for me lately. There are some things that you can adjust to or get used to, but then there are some that i just don´t think i wil ever be able to get used. For instance, the relationships between guys and girls just as friends is very different, they are very touchy kind of hang all over each other kind of different. This as you can probably imagine is dificult for me and sometimes awkward. With the people who say they are Christians but don´t always act like it its even worse, kissing and things like that. So you could definitely pray that God would give me a better understanding of the culture and why the people sometimes do the things they do.

The language is getting better every day. I´m understanding more and just trying to absorb information to be able to speak better. The professors at the school are becoming great friends, Raquel is my friend who i talk with every day in the library, i help her with English and she helps me with Spanish. Neysi, the teacher of the 4th grade class, she makes me laugh every day and always laughs at the things i say in Spanish. It turns out i have found out the hard way a couple of phrases not to say, both times i was talking to Neysi when i discovered this. They are phrases that when translated literally they are perfectly fine, but they have a different meaning in this culture i guess. Oh well there isn´t really any other way i could have found out. Elio is the teacher of informatica (computer class) he is really funny and we like to talk about the students and which ones are good and which ones are bad. He´s really cool.

Thursday i had a really rough class with the 6th graders. They have been the routiest class by far. They weren´t listening to me at all. The boys were all running around and fighting and the girls were just mostly talking. I had to have a good long talk with them about how its impossible for me to teach them when they are like that. It was tough and disheartening, and when the teacher of their class came back in she talked with them as well. They apologized and said they would do better next time, I really hope so, those classes are no fun at all.

I´m pretty sure i am getting the better of this little bit of a cold i have caught. But it has not been bad and i think its receding. Lauren I think its just everyday life that i probably caught this cold but then again you never know for sure. Also for my hair cut it cost me 100 pesos, a little less than 3 bucks. Thanks to all my prayer warriors out there, you´re prayers very are important. Please continue to pray for good health, the cultural differences, learning the language and my classes. Dios les bendiga!

En Cristo,
Danito

P.S. i can´t wait until Frank and Juanita get here! :)