One more week of school

I can't believe that we are actually in our last week of school - finally!  I really just realized that fact a few minutes ago, when some students came over to rent our house for the next trimester... wow, we actually graduate this Friday!  I'm really so very ready to get out of Dodge and move on, but at the same time, it is a bittersweet victory.  Once again, we have to say goodbye to people who have become our family - classmates, ministry kids, teachers, etc.  Our life has become a constant mixture of change and culture and language and goodbyes.  Maybe we can finally grow some roots again in Peru... soon!  

Last week, my language class theme was "controversial topics", as if we don't debate controversial topics every day in this class!!!  Nevertheless, we talked about Dr. Kavorkjan and medical euthanasia, abortion, immigration, and the death penalty - wow!  I find it hard to have these debates in English, much less in Spanish!  What made this particularly interesting was the fact that we were not only debating controversial subjects, but that we were debating them among different cultures, different age groups, and different denominational backgrounds... that makes for a pretty interesting debate!!!  I did come out of this week feeling pretty good about my language skills and my Spanish writing skills (we had to write an editorial response paper for every topic) and I'm pretty confident that I can move to Peru and manage daily life without too many language issues... surely if you can debate the death penalty and present research trends, you should be able to buy groceries and pay the water bill without too much difficulty.

Yesterday was one of my more happy, healthy, laid back days in months... we took Sarah downtown to see "the cow parade".  We have similar art displays in The States.  I know that in South Padre there has been a display of art dolphins in the past, and I think I remember cows from some city at some point.  And I think there was a display of trains in College Station???  Anyway, San Jose, Costa Rica is currently showing 120+ cows by different artists, so we went on a downtown walk to see the cows.  At about 10:30, we stopped at my favorite cafe (above the bookstore downtown) and had coffee and cheesecake for a midmorning snack.  Then we continued on the cow tour, stopping at 11:30-12 to feed the pigeons in Plaza Cultural.  Then off to eat sushi for lunch (yummy!).   More cows until 3:00, then rode the bus home.  Sounds kind of boring???  I loved it!!!  It was just a calm, laid back day... no homework, no pressing schedule.

Last week was also our last time to work with the kids in La Carpio.  We had a final fiesta... showed a slide show of all of our photos from the year, ate popcorn (you would think we handed out gold nuggets on napkins), had a cake and Coke, and said goodbyes.  I held back the tears pretty well (hard to cry when kids are yelling and throwing popcorn during the slide show - kind of breaks the sentimental moment) until Giovanni was hanging on the window of the van while we were trying to drive away and saying "I love you, Laurie"... okay, it is bad enough that he is my favorite, but that sentence was a little much!  I'll never forget Giovanni...

Enough with the goodbyes, already!!!  How much more can we take?  Oh wait, we have 6 weeks in the states and more goodbyes before Peru....  aaarrrrrgggggggg!!!!!!