a saturday a pen a coffee

sometimes its just good to get away by yourself and drink some coffee/ do some reading/ drown out all other noises with caedmon's call in your ears. i rediscover how much i love this band each time i listen to them. its just encouraging and deep and relaxing and all things good for you, wrapped up in melody. 

i am about to tell you something that may surprise you...

..i am currently sitting in a starbucks. see that one coming? now either you are feeling one of two emotions i am about to describe or you are the unpredicted and unforseen variable  and well, irrelevant. just kidding you arent irrelevant, just in this paragraph. since i have had people ask me about my 'village' here in peru i imagine there is a group of you that are struggling imagining a starbucks in the middle of a forest of huts. i commend you for your imagination. then there is a group of you that are saying, why are you in a starbucks? to you i say reread this blogs introduction. im getting in some good reflection time. two days ago marked my first month here in trujillo, and so much has happen that it truly feels as though i have been here so much longer than that. although, i would also venture to say that i may set aside time to 'reflect' but i think i am reflecting and growing and reflecting and growing all cohesively in each moment im blessed to spend here. 

one of the things that i have become more aware of teaching esl in a foreign country is the meaning behind our words. i think a lot of the time we just get so content with what we know our words to mean that sometimes we forget their meaning and we become nonchalant with the way we understand them and use them. (im so sorry if that doesnt make sense) im fortunate to have on my mac this wonderful dictionary program that is full of all sorts of  helpful info and ideas when trying to describe the meaning of a word. ive noticed that probably my most used way to explain meaning has been through example, which is probably especially true since i dont speak the language yet, but even the best example has its own faults. because one example doesnt explain the meaning of the word in entirety and other examples are necessary. which i discover over and over when i describe a word to a student only to have them look more confused and i look at the sentence they are reading and add "oh but in this sentence it means... " haha, oh how i must confuse them. 

anyway this observation has bled somewhat into the way i read my Bible or think about my devotionals. and its made me seek out the meaning of words which i 'know' but help me to understand more deeply if i take the time to think about them a little more than giving the verse a scan. i think taking a moment to look up a definition in a way is helping me to stop and consider further what i am reading. im sure that there is some technical term for this which i cannot tell you, because im not really a technical knowledge knowing kind of gal, but i would like to encourage you to give it a try yourself. 

being in Peru has/is truly being an eye opening/growing experience for me in ways that surpass the typical surface changes that are more obvious. its a time in my life where literally everything is new and the only thing the same yet still growing and changing is my relationship with God and my faith in Him. im overwhelmed with thanks for the experiences i get to share in here and the way that they are molding the woman that God created me to be. and I am oh so thankful for each of you that made it possible for me to be here. there is a lot going on in Peru Mission now, such as SALI, where i teach reaching record numbers of students. As I become more understanding of the way things work here i will keep you updated, but please keep our ministry here in your prayers as it continues to grow and change. 

Julie

according to the rating of 182 random or not so random as it whatever may be, people across the internet.. because of my name i am...

overwhelmingly feminine (but not in the lipstick kind of way i hope, or else they are incredibly wrong)

natural. 

refined. 

wholesome.

classic. 

apparently i am not..

complex.

modern.

devious.

urban.

i never said i could break dance anyway. 

i had some fun with this site on my lazy saturday morning: 

http://www.behindthename.com

go ahead.. you know you want to know what a random group of internet surfers think about your name. you know you do. 

bruise once you get back up.. bruise twice you laugh at yourself..

bruise three separate times within one week and a day of each other one the same knee.. and you start to reevaluate your ability to operate your own body.

i have never claimed to be as graceful as a swan (by the way... why ar swans called graceful?) but since being in Peru it seems my ability to keep bruises off my body, er specifically off my right knee, has essentially vanished. 

incident one: 

two saturdays ago i had my first Larco grupo de jovenes experience (aka youth group.. aka more like a singles group that happens to play games like youth group... aka its a blast) if you know me a slight bit at all im sure you are already aware that i was already a bit nervous approaching the new experience anyway. what you dont know is that the floors in the larco church, and everywhere else in peru, are very slippery. and are capable of making any pair of shoes sound like a flock of geese in and of themselves. but the squeakiness is irrelevant to this story, its just an added quirk. the point is, the floors are slippery. so when we were playing a game that involved quick speed in getting across the room with another person to grab another person to then go back and get into the seat next to you... im sure you can imagine perfectly what went down. namely my face/knee/entire ventral portion of my body. my partners adrenaline and strength surpassed my ability to keep my feet in the proper working direction, and i sailed across the floor, superman style. in front..of all my new peruvian youth group friends. it was fabulous. what a great first impression right?! luckily i walked away with only a bruised up right knee.

incident two:

exactly one week minus a few hours since incident one. this past saturday morning i went with a group from the church to help work on a families house. we (the guys) were tearing down a dilapidated wall and we (the girls and guys) were sifting through things and moving out reusable blocks of adobe. there is no story i can express for you about how my next bruise ended up on my knee other than i just wasnt paying attention and dropped a brick of adobe on myself. way to go coordinated one. so i scraped up my knee and it bruised nicely the next morning. the funnier thing in this circumstance is how many times we moved the same pile of adobe. how many you ask? three i tell you. the same pile you ask? yes i tell you, the same pile. why you ask? because this is peru i tell you. move one: from shambles to somewhat aligned rows near the street. move two: to neater rows farther down from where they were because there was a car coming to unload materials that needed the space. move three? well thats the thing, after move two was a success we were cheerfully informed that it wasnt the right pile of adobe to be moved at all, it was the other wall, and could we please put it back where we found it? yeah.  although the upside of that is that i was able to put what i learned in my spanish class that week into action. 'me duele la espalda' : my back hurts. 

incident three:

the very next day. Sunday night. our first of many soon to come of interns getting together on Sunday nights with our new intern director to get to eat some good food together, have a bible study together, pray together, ...and watch american football together? yep. ;-) well this night.. i happened to be in the yard with heather playing an oh so friendly game of ping pong. im really not that much of a competitive or athletic person (not that it takes a superb athlete to play ping pong.. and not that ping pong isnt a sport) ... and its not that heather was trying to blast me with the tiny white harmless ball. okay, maybe she was. an uninformed bystander could have mistaken her for the competitive type, but in actuality she just liked to launch the balls at me to then laugh at the drama that would then and always happened in my facial expressions.  so naturally at one point in the friendly game... the ball sails toward my upper body with great speed and i...? i think i will defend myself with my knee apparently because i jerked my knee up which was actually under the ping pong table because i was standing too close and i cracked my knee cap to the edge of the table. 

oh what grace i have. and oh how many colors my knee has seen this week. 

**by the way, for those of you wanting to see pictures.. i am currently working on loading some into a google album but i dont have it all figured out yet, so i will soon update you on how you can see for yourself some pictures from some of my random photo experiences in peru!**

p....s.... i miss her.

its time to let you know

that i do not know how to operate my copy and paste options on my laptop.

well, thats true.. and let you know that i know its high time i give you a bit of a hello update from peru.

i had a good bit written out... then as previously mentioned... i lost all awareness of how to operate my laptop .. and lost it. maybe i can recreate the moment:

i am hanging out waiting on my students to come to class.... 

one of my classes this month has been at 5:30. what time do all FOUR of my students roll into class.. about? 6. so yesterday at the end of class i made each one stand up and repeat after me while holding their right hand over their heart and their left straight up in the air ' i ...(name)... promise to be.... in class when it starts.... at 5:30 starting tomorrow' well, except for one who i made promise to be here at 5. because she volunteered to come 30 minutes early to talk spanish with me before the class where i teach her english ;-) the only problem is... she never comes on time except the days when i am a few minutes late.... of course. 

well, i think... i hope... that is all i have time for right now. because i hope that all four of my students are about to surprise me and step around the corner and say 'miss julie we are here for class, five minutes late but thats better than 30!'

and in the mean time... i hope you enjoy some photos:

(which by the way were taken on the strike day... two tuesdays ago, there was a transportation strike so... classes got cancelled ... because the students didnt have a way of getting to class. and basically everything shut down. taxis parked everywhere. the only cars in the streets were personal vehicles or those taxi drivers that dared to roam the streets...  so we walked the streets in search of fun. 

getting acquainted with a new friend

the kind of friend you expected by the title of the blog?

i didnt think so.

on wednesday, i experienced the central market of trujillo with gillian and heather. (both girls i live with, and teachers at SALI) and we came back with... a gatito! 

a precious addition to our six girl filled apartment. he craves attention every second of every moment, and he could quite possibly be a gold medalist in the olympic kitten crawling division if such a league existed. like just now, he decided to crawl from the floor up the couch and up my clothing to my shoulder, with no assistance provided by me, to chill and find some sleep while i work on my computer. how adorable is that? you know it is, even if you are a dog person you know you find that awesome. you now wish you had your own crawling gatito don't you? 

in other news...

we just finished our first week of classes at SALI for September, and i just finished my frist week of classes at SALI ever. whew! i was a little nervous, all week i wasn't so sure i was cut out of the right mold for the whole teaching thing. but i love my students. already. they are great, and make teaching a little less intimidating than it could be. plus, when i picture teaching, i picture teaching someone much younger than me... but my students are all teenagers and my age. also, i get to hang out with them outside of class too. 

also.. just so you know.. the abundance of raw meat here is... endless. 

out our living room windows we get to witness chicken meat or intestines or whatever being hung out to dry all over the roof across the street, for the restaurant downstairs..

and this morning i entered a bodega (store) in our neighborhood.. hunting for fruit to make pancakes with gillian. all of a sudden i think to myself my goodness whats that smell... if you will, picture me with a pinched nose turning my head ever so slightly to the left... to check out the three chickens hanging out, not staring back at me. and smelling quite ripe. 

all i can manage to think to myself is....exit the room. just exit the room. yeah, that doesnt make me desire to change my vegetarian ways. if anything it quite confirms it. 

kind of like finding out that none of the girls i live with own a brush. this confirms that we are to be best friends. at least in my mind. ;-)

well, there is your update for now friends! i hope everyone is well!

and please, continue to keep peru mission in your prayers!