knock over my sandcastle and i'll kick you in the throat

so i got back from mexico a little over a week ago. it was okay. wasn't life-changing or anything, but it had some fun moments....and some not so fun moments of getting sick but i realised sometimes you just gotta puke. oh and also that after a fever breaks, that will make you feel appr
oximately 64% better than you were feeling.

it was a pretty small group that went. 6 guys and 4 girls. we were kind of segregated boys/girls for a while. we pretty much took a boy van and a girl van. so the boys decided to go to wal-mart without even asking us girls if we wanted to go. so, becca and i got bored and decided to duct tape their stuff to the ceiling.



but we also duct taped a note saying "we got bored. take us with you next time". i guess now's the time to mention that it was a high school missions trip which is kind of why i was allowed to do such. they did try to get us back by putting frogs in our room, but they didn't think that we're not freaked out by frogs.

anyway, we got to hand out bags of food to kids that lived in landfills and got to play with some kids at an orphanage. that was okay. but we had loads of free time. so it kind of felt like a vacation, but it was a really great intro for high school students into missions. we also got some beach time. after living in southern california for 2 years, then liberia, both places where i could look out of where i lived and see the ocean. i have desperately missed the beach. however, this was the first time i built a sandcastle. ours won. complete with watchtower, community swimming pool, and landfill. apparently, we were brooklyn.



the other team were the bronx and unfortunately couldn't get the moat to work:


the last group of the boys were to be manhattan (i don't know why we were NY, we didn't have anyone in our group from NY).


but now i actually have a respect for sandcastles and why you should never even think about knocking them over. it's a big deal. so, that's kind of the extent of mexico. now, on to find a job.

love,
p

i want to be like water

okay so where did i leave off? oh right. I love America.

i was initially working the gate for a couple of hours after help set some stuff up. but then that night we were supposed to have the amazing reggie dabbs speak. somewhere around 6:30-7, it starts to rain-bad. so every one has to get in their cars to take shelter, hopefully wait it out. so i get in a car with people who became new friends since my car was so far away and then i leave to find out what's going on. apparently people are saying everything is cancelled. i know reggie. nothing would be canceled on his watch.

so i find him, get to hang out with him and talk about mutual friends we have in florida. and it clears up a bit. he says he's going to speak. so he plays the saxophone and brings people back in. slowly, you see people coming back. then, he does the thriller tribute to michael jackson and probably 1,000 people are out there doing thriller. not correctly though. only savannah and i were the ones who knew how to actually do the dance. so we do it in the rain that has started to pick up a little bit.

after reggie speaks, it kind of starts to pour, but luckily, knowing the right people, i get on a golfcart and don't get as soaked, but what an experience. watching fireworks in the rain. and after having an h2h with my students. good times. as i was sitting in the golf cart watching the rain-the rain wasn't a bad thing. it was so nice-especially because it was so hot. it was refreshing to see rain-even if it drove people away.

and i thought back to a Liberia moment where my friend Taya and I were walking through the forest for what seemed like forever. we ran out of water the last day and when we got to the end, we couldn't care less if anyone picked us up to take us to base on time. we just wanted water. when we drank it, it was the most incredible thing i had ever tasted in that moment. it was what we needed to be refreshed.

water's also flexible. it can go anywhere and fit in places other things can't. i want to be like water.

on a horrible sidenote-considering that would've been a great note to end on-i'm going to mexico tomorrow for a week. this should be interesting. usually people go on multiple missions trips to realise they want to be overseas. i'm kind of going backwards-but that's just how i do things i guess. i'm going with my teenagers, so this should be interesting. we'll see what happens.

love,
patty

camp and i guess we like america

well, i guess i've kept myself busy this summer by hanging out with teenagers. they tend to make time go byquickly. i went to camp as a rec assistant last month and it was fun as it always is. here is a group pic of all the kids, counselors, and RAs we took to camp.


this was really a great camp. great speakers. no drama. except for autumn and katelyn who would sit on my bed singing, "wake me up before you go go" which they only knew a couple of lines to until 2 something in the morning while every one else was sleeping. i guess it's a good thing they're in junior high and still cute.

as always, camp was tiring but loads of fun. then we had the fourth of july. my church puts on a community event called i love america. this is what the stage look like-i stole this pic from my friend matt



but holy cow it was so hot that day this is the unattractive affects of heat exhaustion.

i'm going to write another post, because it's going to get too long.
i'll save your eyes.
love,
p