Day 18

6/25/13

Day 18

Yesterday was relatively very uneventful-- I got up to clean around 9, at which point one significant thing did happen. I saw a text message on my phone that said a certain number had asked me to call it (meaning it was out of saldo, or calling money). I called and talked to Gloria Matute, who very almost-apologetically-bashfully asked if there was anyway if I could help with a computer for the kids to do their school work on. It's a good idea, I told her, but I want her to look around and give me a ballpark of how much something like that would cost-- I really don't want to spend all the money on a computer; I feel like the daily homework help is more important (as well as the psychological help for Jonatan, which I haven't told her about wanting to pursue yet, but I will soon). During the call, I tried to express my firm belief that I was here to bless her family not just because of my own will but because God has put them on my heart. She seems pretty overwhelmed by all of this, in a positive way. 

After the call, I got picked up by Santi to work on the walls around noon, and all of that's going well. Today we should be getting the risers to work on the higher parts of the walls. Later at Magaly's, there were three more visitors for Naty-- a woman that had lived and taught at the biblical institute with her family three years ago was among them. This woman had been a godsend when I was there before, as she had spoken with me in (learned) English when I was drowning in a sea of Spanish. She now lived with her husband and children closer to a foundation for special needs kids, where they now devote their full time. We'd visited once when I was there before, and it was great-- I'm excited to take her up on her invitation to visit again. After tutoring Mateo, Andrea and Angelica came, then their Papi came to take them home. He's apparently keeping the car for a few days, so I'm not sure how the sisters are getting to school-- though I assume friends and buses and taxis. I started getting a little bit of a cold last night, and it's a little worse this morning. Good thing I don't have to be social til Friday. I think it was also my cold that made me wake up to really, really strange dreams. First, at Magaly's, Fani was telling a little mystery girl who was attempting homework that she never, ever lives up to Fani's expectations, at which point I yelled at Fani. I realized during my dream that all of this was happening in English, but it kept going, me trying to make the girl feel better and get her homework done in another room. Then things got really weird— total scene change, a man whose voice sometimes went all weird turned out to have welcomed aliens into his brain, apparently connected to the cancer that gave him massive, ridiculous tumors that he carried around with him in a cart, much to his girlfriend's disgust-- she had left him, I think, because of it. Well, I am kind of happy to have had a non-literal-life-connection dream; for the past several years I've only had the first type I described, with people from my life living out my expectations and fears in exaggerated ways. It's nice to have a little bizarrity.

Today the Internet's not working at the house, Andrea and I are at Magaly's while she finishes an assignment. I'm awaiting a call from church to know what the plan is today. Plans. haha.

~Ely