let's go fly a kite

after perhaps the longest week of my life, full of goodbyes and tears, it was so wonderful to spend time with the river kids this afternoon. after being up until the wee hours of the morning saying one of the hardest goodbyes thus far, i climbed the mountain to the small brick church apprehensive of yet another gut-wrenching, heartbreaking goodbye. last week when i announced my leaving, the room turned quiet, the children prayed the sweetest prayers i have ever heard, calling me their second mom, and tears streamed down their faces. how could i face another afternoon like that? especially after this week of a new goodbye every day?

thankfully, i didn't have to. it was just like any other sunday, except more peaceful and calm than usual. the kids slowly trickled in. we had some time to sit and catch our breath. then we went outside to where the boys stood at the highest points flying their homemade kites. using only a plastic bag, sticks, and string, these ingenious little boys had fashioned amazingly successful little kites.

after a while, tatiana got bored with the kite watching and we went back inside. we sat for a while bouncing a small ball back and forth, and then i taught her how to play jacks, using the little broken crayons in her pocket.  others wandered in and out, trying their hand at the game, making new kites, and coloring in the new coloring books we had brought. at one point, while i was helping tatiana color a picture, i looked up and just soaked in the sights and sounds of small groups of children coloring around the room, others outside playing soccer, and others just sitting playing with little army men. my heart, which had broken a thousand times over in the last week, filled with love for these beautiful children. and once again, i asked myself what i was doing, why was i leaving.

the day ended with the children enjoying the first donuts they had ever had...most didn't even know what a donut was! after one final group picture, three year old carolina  dragged me down the mountain for the last time.  and as heartbreaking as it was to pull away from the little shanty town for the last time, it had really been the perfect way to say goodbye.

You keep track of all my sorrows.
      You have collected all my tears in your bottle. Psalm 56:8

little things

as i lay in bed last night, so cold my insides were shaking and my teeth were chattering, i started to realize there are a few little things that i am excited for when i move back to the states.

*central heat! no longer will i have to wear my winter coat until at least noon everyday or shiver under 30lbs of blankets at night!
*a dryer....my pants might actually fit and my socks won't feel like cardboard!
*flushing toilet paper
*chic-fil-a....sad, but really the only food that i miss :)
*good milkshakes
*efficiency
*seeing my friends and family more often :)

and i know there will be so many more! the trick is focusing on these positives, rather than the many negatives....

a goodbye with no future

tomorrow begins the long journey of goodbye. it is the first of the lasts. tomorrow is my last dance class with some of the most beautiful girls on the planet. as one of my students mused today, "how quickly the time passes."

and the goodbyes are made harder by having nothing yet to look forward to. when people ask the dreaded question, "so what are you going to do now?" i have to answer that i have no idea. talk about a lesson in humility. saying goodbye is hard. saying goodbye when there is not even a glimpse of the future is excruciating. others wonder why you are leaving if there is nothing you are going to. i begin to wonder as well. but then i think of abraham, called to leave his home to go this unknown promise land. he did not have a vision for his future. he just left, and God was faithful and guided him.

so i begin the leaving, and i know God will do the guiding.

"The Lord said to Abram, 'Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I WILL show you." Genesis 12:1 (emphasis added)

dream a little dream

as the day i leave bolivia continues to draw nearer and nearer, and as i continue to have no idea where i will be or what i will be doing come next august, i have decided to focus on dreaming for the more distant future. last weekend, my roommate and i spent a morning planning and dreaming over a lovely pancake breakfast. here is our dream:

the year i turn 30 we will embark on a 5 continent adventure. we will spend 11 months in 11 different orphanages on 4 different continents. in the middle, we will take a month off to rest, visit dear friends in new zealand, and to explore that amazing place. our rough itinerary would be to begin in romania, then to russia, turkey, india, thailand, indonesia, new zealand, uganda, south africa, bolivia, ecuador, and ending in haiti.

now, obviously, many things could come up in the next four years that could change these plans. but i am okay with that, because i know ultimately god is in charge of my steps and his plans are higher than mine. however, having this little dream to hold on to somehow makes the fact i have no immediate plans a little easier. i still have something to look forward to. honestly, i would drop everything and begin this adventure this summer, yet little things like money and actual plans stand in the way of that. but god calls us to dream big, and he will answer with even bigger realities.

so this is my dream. and i can't wait to see my reality!

one month.

one month.

that is all i have left in this amazing city that i love so much. last saturday my roommate and i ventured up to the city to enjoy breakfast at my favorite place in the world, followed by shopping for material for costumes for my little dance girls. while riding in the bus between the cafe and the cloth market, i just gazed out the window, soaking in the sights of the cholitas selling their goods, the children running around, and just the daily doings of people. walking around the market, i realized that i won't be able to shop like this much longer. soon i will be stuck indoors in a store with the wares all nicely arranged on shelves. ugh. the thought makes me sick to my stomach. how can i trade my simple, adventurous life for life in the states?

then this week i was offered a chance to stay. it is tempting. staying means i can quit the horrid job search process. staying means i don't have to say goodbye. staying means i don't have to worry about the details of living in the states that i have avoided for the last four years. staying means i would have a plan. staying would be so easy.

but would i be happy? would i be in the lord's will? would i be able to live life to the fullest? staying also means dealing with people that i would rather not deal with. staying means trading in my classroom for an office. staying means another year of feeling stuck and bored. staying means dealing with more changes that are not always positive. staying means i might be missing out on a whole new adventure.

choosing the harder of two paths is definitely not easy. but i trust that it will be rewarding. and i know god will use me wherever he puts me. the only place i want to be is the place where he wants me. and someday, i will know where that is.

good news

 “To the gals in clear heels, to the guys in clear heels, to the drunks, the addicts, the perverts, the victims, the porn stars, the prostitutes, the adulterers, the thieves, the obese gluttons who think that a waist is a terrible thing to mind, the Twilight fans, the murderers, the mama’s boys, the losers, the freaks, the geeks, people who think wrestling is real, red necks, guys who own action figures, chain smokers, everyone who does not use a turn signal while texting and talking on the phone in their car, men who live with their mother, women who get paid in $1 bills, dudes in dresses, Democrats, Republicans, the guys at the gym who walk around the locker room naked singing Bon Jovi’s Living on a Prayer, Mormons and anyone else who wears sacred underbritches, whoever is responsible for the creation and ongoing sale of men’s Lycra biking shorts, guild leaders, yoga instructors, witches, pot heads, meat heads, crack heads, deadheads and meth heads, Trekkies, people who don’t recycle, the rainbow-loving, tree-hugging, Prius-driving leftists, and religious people who do not know what I am talking about because these subjects were not on Little House on the Prairie or covered in their home school co-op, I have good news for you:  Jesus loves you. You’ll fit right in and because he died for all your sins, you get to repent."
~mark driscoll

"always do the thing that scares you"

~bandslam

in my four years in bolivia i have had many adventures...i have seen the salt flats, macchu pichu, iguazu falls, the perrito moreno glacier, lake titicaca and many other amazing things. however, there has always been one bolivian adventure that i never felt ready to attempt. rurrenabaque....the bolivian amazon. a three day tour of the pampas, full of animals.....monkeys, alligators, weird birds, anacondas, piranhas, and lots and lots of bugs. the only animal that came close to appealing to me was the pink dolphin. but was swimming with pink dolphins worth having to come in close contact with all those other animals? i wasn't so sure. i am by no means an animal lover....i only tolerate dogs! but since i am now in the midst of my last few months in bolivia, i decided to face my fears and tackle this final adventure. and what an absolutely incredible, perfect final adventure it turned out to be!

sunday morning began early, as we woke up at 4:00am to get to the airport to catch our plane to rurrenabaque. the plane was a double propeller plane, the smallest i have ever been in. but we made it safely, landing in a grassy field surrounded by green mountains. we quickly headed into the city to our tour agency's office, eager to begin. and soon we headed out for a three hour drive across the beni. the landscapes and small villages were beautiful, reminding me a lot of the dominican republic, making me long to go back to that amazing country. after our dusty jeep ride, and one flat tire, we made it to the river, where several dugout canoes were lined up ready to take the many tourists into the pampas.

we climbed aboard and began our three hour tour. we saw several amazing birds, lots of turtles, a caiman, and an alligator. we were very impressed with our guide's ability to differentiate a log from an alligator...they all looked the same to us! the highlight of this boat trip was a brief stop under a tree full of cappuccino monkeys. our guide took out a banana, and we each took turns letting the monkeys crawl up our arms to get to the banana. the idea of monkeys crawling on me had NEVER been appealing. but i decided that on this trip i would push myself to do those things i never would have imagined i could do. and it really wasn't that bad....i actually kind of enjoyed it! eventually we pulled up to our camp, which would be our home for the next two nights. nothing fancy....a bunch of shacks connected by wooden walkways, everything on stilts so the water wouldn't flood the buildings. our camp was also home to several howler monkeys (they make great alarm clocks!), an alligator named princess, and a very large, very frightening black caiman.

the next morning we awoke to the howler monkeys screeching above us and after a delicious breakfast we headed out on the most feared part of the trip: the anaconda hunt. we donned big black rubber boots, and started the hot, sticky walk through a large, grassy field. soon the dry path turned into a wet, marshy, nasty swamp. one step into the black, rancid water soon alerted me to the fact that one of my boots had a hole in it. my boot was soon full of water, yet i walked on....praying i wouldn't be the one to find the anaconda! after an hour of walking through the field in the blazing sun, we came upon a little forest and took a minute to relax in the shade. our guide began hunting in earnest for an anaconda. soon cries from another group brought us running to a tree...only to see a tiny green snake peeking out from a hole in a branch. definitely not an anaconda. a few of the others and i soon grew weary of searching for this large snake we weren't even sure we really wanted to meet and found a shady spot to sit and wait for the others. we did find several lizards, and my favorite, a huge wild amazon ostrich! but no anaconda. i really can't say if i am sorry...though it might have made the walk through the swampy field worth it!

after lunch we headed back out in our boat, this time to fish for piranhas. the first three piranhas were caught by our guide. they were much smaller than we had imagined, but their teeth were quite vicious looking. we were beginning to get frustrated with our ability as fisherwomen, but soon we began to get little nibbles. for a long time, the piranhas were faster than us, stealing the bait off our hooks before we could pull them in. then jenny caught a catfish, and steph and ali caught piranhas. i had a piranha out of the water but it jumped off the hook before i could swing him into the boat. oh well. the time spent fishing was relaxing and a great time for good conversation with good friends! after piranha fishing we headed to another place to watch a beautiful sunset, stopping to see a sloth on the way!

then after sunset, and after dinner, we headed out again....this time armed with flashlights to look for the red eyes of caimans and alligators in the dark. we set off and soon our guide pulled into a grassy part of the river. we thought we were stuck and were trying not to be too scared. he started telling us to look at the alligator next to the boat and hesitantly we shone our flashlights where he directed. when we still didn't see anything he came up behind us and pointed....holding a baby alligator about a foot from my face! i will admit, i think i screamed! the other girls began asking if they could hold it and he directed them in how to safely hold the little guy. i sat there thinking, no way, there is absolutely no way i am even touching him, much less holding him. this is where i drew the line on trying everything on this trip. but then i realized, there was very little chance of anything happening....and really what a great story to tell later. so i gave in, washed my hands, and held the alligator. i can't say i loved it, i can't even say i enjoyed it all, but i did it. and i lived to tell about it! we then let him go and went on through the river, shining our flashlights, looking for the glowing red eyes in the bushes and weeds. i actually got pretty good at spotting them....and while it was eery to realize how close these frightening creatures were, we all felt very safe in the boat.

the final morning was the morning i had been waiting for the whole trip. we were going to swim with the pink river dolphins! we had already spotted several on our many boat rides, but today we would go to places where several lived and actually get in the water and swim! and of course, it was cloudy, cold and rainy. but that didn't stop us. we jumped in and waited. the dolphins were shy, and while we could see them swimming and playing, they would never get close enough to let us touch them. after the initial swim, we got back in the boat and went to several other places to watch them play. we also saw capybaras, huge rodents that look like giant hamsters. they were perhaps the strangest creatures we saw on the trip. at the very end we went back to one more place with the dolphins and spent a long time playing with them and watching them play.  it was the absolutely perfect ending to this great adventure.

in the end, i am glad i saved this trip for my last big south american adventure (for a while, anyway). it pushed me and stretched me more than any other trip. i have grown a lot in my time in bolivia, in many ways. but perhaps the most noticeable way is my new sense of adventure and love for the outdoors. and this trip was the perfect way to prove to myself that i really can do anything, no matter how scary it may seem. and the result is an amazing story to share!