My Super Sweet Weekend Plans

10-17-09
Things are going well. Tonight my youth group is showing a double feature at the community center to raise some money for our community census project. I really have no idea how it´ll go. First we´re showing a kids movie (The Incredibles) and afterwards there´ll be another movie for adults but we couldn´t pick a movie last night during our 1.5 hour long meeting. It is pretty impressive how slowly things move in our youth group meetings. There is usually a great deal of texting throughout. (Last night I was actually actively texting, then felt kind of bad about it... But is this just cultural assimilation? Can I at least tell myself that?) Anyway, we´ll be making the popcorn at my house, so I´m interested to see how that goes. My youth group is between 15 and 22, consists of about 6 guys and 3 girls, though sometimes we have almost double that and the girls who show up change slightly depending on who the guys are dating from week to week. It is an interesting bunch and takes FOREVER to decide on the littlest things, but I like them. Tonight marks the third night in a row I´ll be hanging out with them. The past two nights have gone to making the smallest decisions about tonight´s movie. They can be little shits, but they are teenagers, so....

This week has been good. I´m still absolutely loving sex ed. I´ve expanded it to a few other classes, and those are going well. We have a question box for each class so that the kids can ask questions anonymously without being embarassed. The three questions I got this week were: 1) Does it hurt for the girl the first time she has sex?; 2) Does it hurt for the guy his first time?; and 3) Is there love between homosexual couples? The class was so amazingly attentive when I answered these questions. The classes are really living up to my expectations thus far. We´ve begun with myth vs. fact, during which I´ve been pretty amazed at some common misconceptions, and anatomy in which I was surprised by some of the mislabeling during the introductory games. I also went to the Paraguay-Colombia game this week. Paraguay lost 2-0, and it was rainy and kind of gross out, but I enjoyed it. A bunch of volunteers came into the capital for the game, so it was great to see everyone, obviously.

The house is still going well though I´m continuing to live out of my luggage. I just kept trying to buy wood to do construction and they kept being closed. It is a slow process but I´ve been busy enough and I don´t mind too much living out of my bags. Tomorrow should be a crazy day. I´m debating going to church or not (I honestly just go from time to time for my reputation), then I´m going to a meeting in the squatting community, then some middle schoolers are coming over for a meeting about how we can plan activities and games with the comedor, then I have a girls´ group meeting. The crazy thing is that tomorrow is scheduled to be so busy, but if it rains I´m sure the only thing that´ll happen is church. We shall see.

My favorite children are doing better. Their brother got back from the hospital and seems much better so their mom is back now and actually just started working doing daycare in our neighborhood, which is excellent. The kids did end up coming over last week for lunch and coloring/play time, and a few days ago I noticed that my name, spelled incorrectly (Nasi), is now written in red marker on my freshly painted wall. I think it´ll be a while until I have children of my own but in the meantime, I don´t mind these Paraguayan children...