Life in a fishbowl...

A hint of dead iguana!

It has been a crazy couple of weeks. We've had two retreats, a sick doggy that almost died and needed to be nursed back to health, a ballet show to get ready for, a friend and her three year old staying for a week and a husband getting ready to leave for a twelve day trip. Needless to say, the house looked like someone had picked it up, shaken it all around and then sat it down again. Disaster zone. I usually don't enjoy housework, weird I know, but today It was kind of nice to not go anywhere and get the house back in shape. Actually, we all cleaned. Eli and Logan cleaned their rooms, Ben cleaned the toilets, I cleaned the back porch....taking a break once to bury a dead and very smelly iguana...washed the dishes, and swept all of the floors. I know that tomorrow the floors will get dirty again ( the joy of living on the ocean), and the dishes will need washed again, but for now the house is clean. *sigh* we lit candles too, so it smells like vanilla with just a hint of dead iguana!

Kids are awesome!

We just finished a retreat for 9 to 12 year olds.  It was all about emotions and how to handle them in a Godly and self controlled way. (I was thinking of Benjamin when I realized that would be a good theme for this age!)  Angela and Francis, two of our counselors (see picture below), were the teachers. They did a great job of helping the kids understand in creative, fun ways how our emotions can be good or bad depending on our actions, and how the Holy Spirit can help us control them and use them in a good way. 

 

We had a bunch of new kids this weekend (about 10). Every night before we send the kids to their cabins, we stand in a big circle "mano a mano" (holding hands) and pray. On Friday I happened to be standing next to one of the new girls, and she excitedly told me, "I just got here, and I love it already!" It's awesome to hear something like that!  That means that God's love is being poured out on these kids through the counselors and staff.

 

I am reminded every time we have this age in camp of the differences between boys and girls. It's hilarious.  Saturday morning I woke up around 7:15 because I could hear the boys from what I thought was their cabin. I decided to go and let the counselors know that it was OK to take them outside to play before breakfast sincethat was still over an hour away. As I left the house though, I saw several sleepy counselors already outside playing with a bunch of wild, energetic boys. I was informed that they had been awake since 6:30.  I went to wake up the girls, and as I entered I saw smiling faces everywhere.  I was told by equally sleepy counselors that the campers had been awake since 6 planning what they were going to wear that day.

 

On Sunday as we were going into the comedor to eat lunch, some parents arrived to pick up their son.  He was one of the new kids and decided to eat before he left. As he came in I commented to him about this, and he said, "Yeah, the food here is great, a lot better than my mom's at home!" I was glad that his mom had stayed outside to wait for him!

Se habla español.....

So the other day I was talking to Eli about learning Spanish and why she should.  We live in Puerto Rico, honey; people in Puerto Rico speak Spanish.

People always ask me if our kids speak Spanish fluently; and when I tell them not really, they wonder why since they were born in Puerto Rico and have lived there all of there lives. Learning another language has so many different stages:  the everything sounds like goballygook stage, the oh he just said house cool I know that word oh know now I missed the rest of the sentence stage, the I can carry on a one on one conversation with a person speaking slowly stage, the i understand everything being said stage but have a hard time speaking stage, the only speaking in the present tense stage, the i'm tired so I can't even speak English stage, the I'm afraid to make a mistake so I won't say anything stage, and the list could go on and on.....  Ben, Eli and Logan are in one or another of theses stages depending on the day, their attitude, who their with or any number of other things.   

I am convinced that most language learning is a result of being surrounded by speakers of that language. Eli is helping me to prove this idea true. Lately we have had a lot of Spanish speakers over to play, and she has suddenly adopted some new phrases. The part I find the funniest is that she not only picks up the Spanish, she picks up the Puerto Rican attitude...the volume level, the hand motions. So fun to watch and hear. ¡Me encanta!

Noche de Tacos

Jon and I have realized over the years that we are really bad at a couple of things.  Perhaps you can guess the first one when you look at how often I post things on this blog.  Long distance communication is not something that comes naturally to us unfortunately.  We are and have been working on that  with varying degrees of success.

We are also not so good at cultivating community. 

The weird thing is that we both like people, we like to talk, we like to hang out, we like to have people at our house. For some reason though it rarely happens on its own. There are some people who just show up or call and say "come pick me up, I want to come over."  I won't mention any names....Stephanie "I'm comin to your house this weekend" Almonte!  Personally, I love it when they do that.  And if they left it up to me  or Jon it might not happen since we are severely lacking in the let's do something today category.

Recognizing these flaws has made us try to be intentional about creating community here at camp.  I live ten feet from Julio and Beth's door.  I have hung out with Beth for a period of more than 10 minutes with her maybe once in the past month.  That's no good.  Realizing that part of the problem is just life and busyness,  we decided to start "taco night".  Everyone has to eat right?  We all eat around the same time, right?  So why not do it together once a week.  Tonight was the first "taco night" we have had since before summer (due to camp busyness and our trip to the states). Here's a peek at what it looked like:

Imagine my kitchen with it's beautifully tiled floor and fully functional electrical abilities...ahhh imagination....now imagine three tables set up together, Logan is helping to put cheese into the bowls, Eli wants a yogurt cause "they're really good mom", Beth (who later will stand for 45 minutes by the refrigerator making up weird magnet phrases in spanish..un momento bien duro..with Stephanie, oh yeah, she and Fred came late and finished off all of the food) is cutting up a to-ma-toe, the elders Mr. Lawrence and my dad are in a deep conversation about something very serious and entertaining, oops....Logan just spilled a bunch of cheese onto the table. "Don't worry mom, I got it," said while swiping it all onto the floor. Sunny, the golden retriever, is trying to scratch down the back screen door because Grandma is here and needs to pet her immediately.  Sit down everyone so we can pray.......Ben, put the book down and come here to eat.  Mr. Dave comes back with a big bowl of ice for drinks which Grandma eats later for desert because Mrs. Barbara is not here and she usually brings that.  It was decided that Jim, the new guy from Michigan, will be the desert bringer now.  Hear that, Jim?  Hey old timers....sit down so we can start.  So they sit down together and show Ben the almost 11 year old how to be obnoxious (like 11 year old boys need help with that) by hitting the bottom of your cup with your fork.  Logan, don't take a bite; we're going to pray. 

Thank you Lord that even though we are not very good at this community thing it happens anyway. It's fun. It's good. It's important.  Buen provecho!

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Mr. Jim

So about a year and a half ago Julio, Beth and I went up to Grace Adventures in Michigan for their staff training. We braved the cold wet June weather, ate at the Olive Garden (not available in PR), played with Chase and Mia at Mr. Don and Mrs. Sandy's house, and learned a lot about training a camp summer staff.  It was a great time.  While we were there, we met a lot of really fun people. One of those persons  was Mr. Jim Gamble.    Not to long ago Jon (the hubby) recieved an email about a guy who was interested in coming to Puerto Rico to work at camp.  Lo and behold, it was Mr. Jim.  So Monday Mr. Jim arrived to a soggy Campamento del Caribe to begin working as the program director.  Finally today we had a nice sunny pretty mosquitoe filled day for him. Those of you who have been to Puerto Rico and campa before may want to write to him and give him any advise or must see/do things. I'm sure he would appreciate it!

 

Invitan, invitan......