A week and a half in...

Sooooo, it's been a while since I posted.

On Sunday, I attended my first Colombian church service in the driveway/patio at the Perrows' house. The church meets outside under a tent. Then, the little kids go in one room and the youth in another. It had a bit of a different feel to it...a little more upbeat than most services. Afterwards, all of us gringos went up in front of the group and sang a song in English (I think it was "Lord, I Life Your Name On High). Then, Bill told the congregation that I would be teaching English....and a bunch of them wanted me to help them learn English. So, we set up times for that to happen today (Saturday...six days later). I had three kids come this morning, which wasn't as many as I thought would come, but it was still good.

I spent Monday through Friday on the farm with the boys. That was a good time overall. I didn't get a ton of work done because the boys are off school and just hanging out, but I was okay with that. I haven't had any formal classes with the boys, but Paul and I have spent a ton of time informally teaching the kids English....while they teach us Spanish. That's been good because we all something to teach and something to learn.

The food is very different what we usually eat in the US. For breakfast, we have an arepa (sort of a thick soft taco shell) with a block of queso. Every day. Luckily, it's pretty good. Every other meal...and I mean every meal, we have rice. Luckily, I like rice. Usually, we have some type of meat or vegetable too. We have various types of juice made from fruits that we don't have in the US. Overall, the food is good, though. On Wednesday, we took the boys to a waterpark (which they get to do maybe once a year, and only when a group of gringos comes), and instead of pizza or a hotdog like you would expect, this is what I had at the waterpark food court:

Another thing that needs to be understood about Colombia is how schedules work. They are very tentative. You have to be able to go with the flow and be ready to change it up. For example, Paul and I just found out that most of the boys will be going to their homes for a two week vacation before school starts up again. Only five of the twenty-five boys are staying at the farm. Not only that, the team from West Virginia is leaving on Monday. So....Paul and I might stay in Medellin for part of the week and explore. But we don't really know what's going to happen. We'll see.

In future blog posts, I hope to be a little more insightful and deeper.

But until then, here are some pictures of the Boys Farm: