You Go Nate!

WHAT A WEEK (and a half)!

I have been super duper busy this week. All this work teaching, preparing lessons, sitting in class, writing essays and more has been a workout. My brain got a little cooked by Thursday and I could barely teach a coherent lesson. I'm ok now though. All the hard stuff is behind me and tonight we are having our end-of-the-course party even though the course doesn't end officially until Tuesday. The class decided that this would be the best time for everyone to have a party. And Monday and Tuesday are going to be softer days, working on our resumes and we get a brief Quechua lesson. (Quechua is the main indigenous language of Peru, the language of the Incas.) So I can relax this weekend and just chill.

Last weekend was very fun. My second cousin Jonathan Tanner, who just finished at law school, was in town and hung out with us a bit over the weekend. On Friday night we went to the traveling amusement park. It was Alana, Juan Carlos, Tammie, Ruben, Me and Jonathan. We each went on about three rides. There was one ride that I thought looked pretty fun, you sat in a car and the ride went up and down as you went around a big, what I thought was a gypsy girl, in the middle. I got off the ride, thinking myself pretty tough when I saw the name of the ride, "Barbie" ...and yes, the "gypsy" in the middle was Barbie herself. What was usually great with all of the rides was that they just kept going, you thought they were going to stop at some point but they wouldn't. You got your money's worth, that's for sure. Afterwords we went out for dinner.

You can see the Barbie ride behind me as I wait in line for the bumper cars.

The next day was Saturday and General Conference. The Stake was kind enough to set up a TV in a classroom of the Stake Center for us gringos to watch conference in English. It was nice. That night it was just Jonathan and I watching the Priesthood Session in the English room.

Me, Juan Carlos, Alana and Jonathan Tanner in our apartment

On Sunday we again got to go watch Conference and that was nice. That night we had Jonathan and the two boyfriends over for a lamb stew that I made and played Uno.

Church members leaving the Stake Center after a session of General Conference

This week was stressful and I'm ready for the weekend, but I have still enjoyed it for the most part. On Tuesday they asked me to fill in for teacher for two classes, it added to my load but it was good experience. Maximo Nivel is also planning on hiring me for the next few months as a full-time teacher. I don't know when I'm starting or what my hours are yet but I should find out tomorrow at a teacher orientation meeting with the director.

It's weird, on the one hand I feel like I've been doing this TEFL course for forever, but on the other hand I can't believe a whole month has almost past. I'm excited to get back to a regular schedule and have some time each day to do other things.

I've seen Barney in a couple of places, and I'm not entirely sure what he's promoting.

ps. Matell can have my idea for "Gypsy Barbie"... for a price.