My daily life...

Well, my wonderful parents recently wrote me an email requesting that I tell more about my daily life here in the grand city of Naucalpan, Mexico. I began writing them an email, but decided that maybe more of you out there would want to know what exactly I do with my time here every day - so here it is:

Well, everyday I wake up between 8:00 and 9:30. I eat breakfast at home. It´s usually just me and Mario. He makes something like quesadillas, mexican eggs, or fried ham that we eat with sweet bread, tortillas, and coffee. Mexican´s have tortillas with basically every meal which is really interesting. They also don´t buy groceries very often - instead they just buy things the day that they´re going to eat them in the amount they´re going to eat. This means that every morning one of my tasks is to go to the Tortilleria (tortilla making factory/store) and buy 5 pesos worth of tortillas for Mario and I.

After breakfast I usually watch TV for a little (in spanish - so it´s good practice), study some spanish, read, shower, or prepare for english class, for my meetings with the young guys I´m mentoring, or run some kind of errand for RECH. At 2:30 Mario and I take a 10 minute Combi ride to the neighborhood of Molino where our pastors and their family live. We have lunch with the family, which includs Fernando and Rebecca (our pastors), their daughter Alva, their son Emanuel, their "adopted" sons Carlos (Cha Cha´s) and Luis, and Rebecca´s father Don Juve.

After lunch I usually hang out with Cha Cha´s for a while (he´s about 9 or so, and his family is often too busy to play with him much - his real mom lives in Atlanta, Georgia where she´s working and sending money back to Carlos). We play cards, foosball (which costs a peso down the street), or Tazos (remeber when Pogs were big in the US?), or watch Bob Esponja (Spongebob Squarepants) on TV.

Mondays in the evening I´m free to do whatever I want. Monday is my day of rest. I usually end up at the internet cafe these nights (like right now), although sometimes I go play guitar with H2O, the band from my church that is pretty good and get´s played on the Christian Radio station in Mexico City.

Tuesdays I go to the church at 5:00 to practice guitar with the worship band for the Sunday service. Afterwards (at 7:00) we have a prayer meeting in the church that lasts until about 9 or 9:30.

Wednesday is the only day I eat breakfast away from home. I walk downt he street to my friend Elías´ house and have breakfast with him and his family who I really like a lot. His mom is really sweet and is always trying to fatten me up and his sister, Cecia, is very talkative and funny. Wednesday evenings I give guitar lessons to a friend named Ponce, bass lessons to another friend named Gabi, and soon I´m gonna be giving guitar (and maybe drum) lessons to Ricardo and Luis (two other friends).

Thursday evenings I go to the church at 7:00 for bible study. It usually lasts a little too long (like until 10:00 or so), but is generally interesting and good Spanish practice.

Fridays I do things with friends in the evening like go out to eat or watch movies. I was meeting with one of the youth on Friday nights, but he´s having some problems and pastor Fernando is going to start meeting with him soon instead. The youth cancelled our meeting this past Friday and ended up getting in a fight in the street. Maybe it´s for the better that we won´t be meeting anymore, but I´m still disapointed.

Saturdays are days when anything can happen, but I usually spend them doing something with friends.

Sundays Mario and I leave for church at 8:30. It usually lasts until about 11:00 or 12:00 and then we have Sunday school until about 1:00 or 1:30. After that I usually go out to eat with friends or get invited to a church members house for lunch. Then, in the evening, we almost inevitably end up at the soccer pitch (which is good because I don´t get any other exercise and about the only thing I eat is meat).

Wow, that ended up being a lot longer than I thought it would be. Well, thanks for bearing with me through that. I hope it gave you some insight into what I do here - which is likely to be changing and changing again as time goes on. Take care of yourselves and keep in touch!
Peace,
Dan

What´s been up lately and... ¨the Combi¨.

Well, I´ve been sick (throat problems) for about 5 days, but today I woke up feeling muuuccchhhh better gracias a Díos! The worst part of it all is that I had to miss RECH´s Camping Trip this past weekend. I already saw some video of it and it looked like quite a sweet time. Besides being sick (which I guess is an inevitable side effect of traveling) I´ve had pleanty to fill up my time lately. I´ve been meeting once a week with two chavos (young guys) from the youth group and basically mentoring them. It´s been really cool, but also quite hard at times when I can´t say what I want. I´ve also been working a lot to prepare for my first English class, which will be this Saturday! Ahhh!

Now a note on public transportation in Naucalpan:
How do I travel? One word - ¨Combi¨. What does this mean you may ask. Well, Combi is short for ¨Combinación¨ - the cheapest and most ¨interesting¨way to travel the city (which is huge, by the way). A ¨Combi¨is a van, most commonly an old VW, with the back rearanged for maximum seating capacity. This means, most of the time, you´re packed into this thing with like 10 or more other people while dodging other combi´s on the crowded streets. Needless to say it gets hot. Ohhh, and the things you see. Chavos (youngin´s) making out, Viejos (old people) from the campo (countryside) making there way to Mexico City where they can sell their handmade/hand picked goods, women carrying their babies in huge blankets the completely cover the baby so that you wonder how they breate, and the other day I hit the jackpot... a woman throwing up. Oh, it was awful, I felt so sorry and embarrassed for her as she passed her money to the driver and got out saying ¨disculpame señor¨, but I´m not at all suprised that it happened. Actually, I´m suprised I havn´t seen it more with the way they drive on the curving, hillside streets. Don´t worry though everyone!!! In reality, I generally feel very safe (Mom and Dad).

So, OK, I know... I still don´t have any pictures of Naucalpan or my friends on here. Lo siento amigos! I promise I will try to have some up soon. I hope you are all doing well wherever you are! I miss you! I love you! Peace and shalom and all that jazz!