my journey contines

my weekend was pretty full… which is funny because in the beginning i was a little sad about how little i would be doing. i’ve been feeling really lonely lately and i guess that all got to me.

anyways, friday night i took it pretty easy. went to Woody’s with the girls (Wendy, Amira, and Amira’s friend — sorry I’m temporarily drawing a blank on her/your name!)… it was nice, then i just went back home, talked to my parents for a bit, and went to bed early. saturday morning i met with my pastor’s wife of the church i’m attending here in Managua, Claudia and we went to a nearby mall to chat and kinda get to know each other a bit. it was really nice and she’s very encouraging.

then one of my Nicaraguan friends, Gabriela, came over. she’s super nice and we get to practice our English/Spanish. she doesn’t speak much English but she’s starting to study 2 hours 4 days a week in an institute with our other friends Massiel and Evelyn. so we hung out for a while. she told me that she’s going to introduce me to her parents… so i did the same! i called my parents up on Skype, and set up my webcam and made the introductions and did the translating. hehe… so fun. this is a pic of me and Gaby.

in the evening Wendy and her housemate and our friend Megan hosted a boys vs. girls party at their house. a bunch of our friends got together and went for drinks and snacks and games - -and it was so fun! i invited Gabriela and we all had a blast. here’s a video from some of the games hehe…

this morning i went to “segunda iglesia bautista hispana”, in English “second spanish baptist church”. this church is American Baptist (I didn’t realize there were such huge differences i.e. PCA and PCUSA, American Baptist & Southern Baptist)… it was really similar to some of my experiences in a Pentecostal church, camp-like setting, in Canada. Except louder. But it wasn’t bad! It was very different and the speakers did jump into English from time to time for short periods. It was really interesting because there was a child dedication. Also, there was communion which I’ve never participated in while in a non-English service.

this afternoon I came back and worked on my critical review of another article for my one of my research classes. it took me forever, for some reason, to come up with my questions. but I did it! and got them in on time. haha… thank you proof-readers (mom & dad hehe)

tonight was the super bowl party. majority of our cohert was routing for da bears, encouraged by Matt. the first 16 seconds was definitely exciting. Mr. & Mrs. Allen (Rebecca’s parents) and Rebecca had us all over to their house. It was lovely and wonderful to have delicious home cooked food! Thank you! (And happy birthday Mr. Allen!)

can i just say… i really love my cohort. it’s awesome having it set up like this! not so sure about squishing it all into 8 months part, but… in case any of you aren’t familiar with this set up in my cohort we have 15 people. they are all in the MA for International Development. we will be taking all of our classes together for the entire duration of our program (except for our field placements), with no new students joining us. it is just us in our little group. same pressures, same due dates, etc. to my cohort buddies: you are awesome!!

so although the bears didn’t win, it was a fun night! and i did get my questions finished. finally, in wrapping up dawn and i had a nice talk for almost 2 hours, one of those talks that just kind of goes on and on and kind of branches off into random topics with Raymond. which was cool.

so i know you’re reading because the counter says so. feel free to make comments because you know those are fun for me to read too! just click on the underlined comments option and type away.

thanks for reading
shannon

Hey!

And yes… laugh if you will, but I got a picture

Some of my friends tease/joke about me blogging everything but I have the counter at the bottom that shows how many people individually have seen the site. It doesn’t increase every time the page loads, but the counter keeps track of the number of individual people who are reading it (well ISP numbers…). So some people are enjoying it. Or at least care about me a lot and enough to check how I’m doing. hehe… Thanks. I feel SO loved