Quick Update

Life is picking up down here in South America...I´m really starting to enjoy myself. My job is great and I love the kids and my co-workers. I still wish it was a little longer of a day but it´s great. My official job is being in the four year old classroom helping the other teacher. Then for thirty minutes every day I go to another class and teach the students English. Usually it´s one or two words because they are all very young. Then on Wednesday´s in the afternoon I teach English to about 20 students that are from 6 years old to 15 years old for an hour. It´s interesting but it went a lot better than I thought it would. I am also teaching English to my boss one day a week. She is really great and I come to her house every day for my Siesta because there is nowhere else to go and my house is too far away. I´ve grown to love her family and they help me with my Spanish some too. Her husband is the pastor at the church right next to my work and he is the person that arranged all of our jobs and houses here in Paraguay! Anyway, I should go but just wanted to give you all a brief update! Talk to you soon!

Things are starting to pick up a bit...

Hello everyone, hope this message finds you all well. Things are going pretty well here in Paraguay. We have been lucky enough to have a few days of cool rainy weather, it has been amazing! For all of you it is turning into fall, and those of you not in PHX it is cooling down and the leaves are changing and whatnot...here, not so much. It is getting hotter, except for these few days, and it will just continue to increase. I´ve been told it gets up to like 115 degrees F! I can handle that becuase its like home, but there´s humidity here! But I will live and God is definitely showing me that. I don´t need to be totally comfortable to be happy.

My work has picked up a bit, I am now reading with students in the first grade class that struggle with reading, I´ve been able to use some of my teaching background so that has been fun. I am also helping in a classroom with 4 year olds. After that I read with two of the 2nd graders. Also, on Fridays I teach English to the 2nd grade students. I love the kids and I love their excitment and enthusiasm. I have been able to communicate a tiny bit better with the teachers, and getting to know them a little better, which has been great. They are really wonderful people. I also have been able to learn some stuff about the children. Most of them come from troubled homes and backgrounds, where their parents are not around and don´t provide a positive influence for their kids. This is what we try to accomplish at the school. They are all great in their own ways and I can´t wait until I understand everything they are saying to me. LOL! They talk very fast and high so I especially struggle to understand the kids. They call me Tia Katie (Cotty is how it sounds), or Profe Katie...its adorable! That means aunt Katie or teacher Katie for those of you who might not know. I am also going to start teaching English at the church right next door to the school two afternoons a week...a little nerve racking since I still can´t speak Spanish but we´ll see how it goes!

I can´t express in just a few short words how much God is already working within me. A friend of mine gave me a devotional before I left and every day I read it I am so amazed and in awe of God and how directly the Bible verses and messages apply to my life right now. I am taking it one day at a time and listening to what God has to say to me. I may not know the exact reason I´m here and might feel like going home at times but God has a plan and I want to be able to fulfill that for him.

Hope you all have a great weekend, I will try to write again soon.

P.S. Sorry if there are spelling errors, I am using a computer thats set to Spanish only and so when I click spell check it says all my words are wrong. :) And for those of you who know me well, I can´t spell!

Paraguay thus far...

To start, sorry I haven´t made a blog post since Argentina, we had better internet access there so it was a lot easier to write. I have internet here in Paraguay but it charges my host family per minute so I am trying to use it as little as possible. I do have internet on my phone which is great, but writing a blog on a tiny phone is somewhat of a challenge:)

So, we arrived here in Asuncion, Paraguay after a long 22 hour bus ride on the most comfortable bus I´ve ever been on, and I´m not joking, we pretty much had a bed on there, it was wonderful! But the ride was ok and I was filled with nerves and anxious to see what Paraguay would be like. We arrived around 4:30 p.m.and hadn´t eaten anything since 10:00p.m. the night before so the pastor and his assistant that picked us up took us to Burger King, good ol´American food to start out our time in Paraguay! :) We then went to our host families for the night. I was the first to be dropped of and I was not ready to leave my group yet. But I had to go anyway. I met my family, the Neufeld´s, the dad is Alvin, the mom is Renata, and there are 3 kids, Samuel (13), Tonia (11), and Marcos (8). Hopefully I can put up pictures soon so you can see them. They are a very nice family that has taken me in with such short notice. I share a room with Tonia. The first night I unpacked my things and tried to get settled in. As most of you know, I am easily homesick and I was definitely homesick that first night and I am still struggling with it but I´m taking it each day at a time and trying to work through it. The last few days I have been able to get closer to my family here which has helped a lot. Oh and the dad speaks English and the mom a little as well, which is great for me to be able to communicate but doesn´t really help my Spanish much.

The first 4 days were spent touring the city with our lovely tour guide, Dario, not sure he enjoyed that but he is Alfred´s assistant so he kinda had to. It was fun though to get to see the city and also become familiar with the buses. I take 1 bus to work every morning and 2 home...that is a change for sure. I´m not used to public transpirtion but its doable. Not terrible just not the best of times. :)

So you are probably wondering about my work. Well to be honest its a bit slow right now but I´m hoping it will pick up. I am working at the daycare-school! There hope is to have me teach English when my Spanish gets better so we will see about that. Hopefully sometime soon I will be able to get more involved. This week we pretty much just painted some Hop-Scotch things for the kids, hung out with the kids, and did any misc work they needed us to. Here there is a 2-3 hr break in the middle of the day so that has been interesting. Myride is about 40min each way so there is no point in going home and then coming back so we have been trying to figure something else out to do. When I say ¨we¨ I mean Riley and I. He works there as well, its nice to have someone from my group with me. Cara, another group member, was there with us this week as well because her job doesnt start until Monday.

My Spanish is still pretty rough, we had classes this week but they are different than what I expected, like most things about this trip...lol! But hopefully they will become useful or I might seek out some private lessons so that I can improve quicker.

Hope this gives everyone a bit of an idea of what is happening here and I hope to have more exciting things to tell you in the near future. Please continue to pray for my homesickness...sadly it has not gone away yet. As well as my ability to addapt to the heat...haha...its hot here and no AC. My Spanish could use some prayers as well. Thank you so much, talk to you soon!