oliver eyes

it's been a whole week since my last post, and soooooooooooooooooo much has happened. first off, a big fat thanks to everyone who commented. that makes checking this thing a whole lot more interesting for me. i miss you guys too! oh, and the naked monkey statues are all over the place. i'm not sure what they're supposed to be, but they're quite odd, and i was told that that's what they're called. in spanish, of course.

i think the biggest thing that's happened is i found a place to live. i moved in with a mom and daughter, enid and britanny. britanny is my age and pioneering, so that's awesome. and enid has been wonderful, cleaning up the house, trying to make it a home. our house is really close to the kingdom hall and wal-mart... and what else do you need? so far, i haven't been able to explore too much cause even when i do get out, it's all in spanish so i don't really know what's going on anyway. i'm out of my suitcase and in my room. i have my own bed, and i went grocery shopping. it feels really good. but there are some weird things that you can't get here. apparently all the dairy tastes a little weird here. people get very excited for canadian cheese. and you can't get pickles. i'm having a hard time finding all the weird natural food i like. i went to a health food store the other day and tried to explain to two mexican women that i was looking for seaweed. it was harder than it sounds. but they were really nice about it. that's one of the great things about mexican people - they are very patient with stupid gringos like me.

me and britanny have been working on our spanish together. she's already been here for a month, so she knows quite a bit more than i do. we practice on each other while we walk to the service groups or the meetings. that's helping already. we thought about taking lessons, but decided that salsa lessons were more important. we're girls with priorities.

last week we went to white chicks. movies here are really cheap, and it's neat cause the movie is in english, with spanish subtitles. so i try to use it to improve my spanish. anyway, we were really early for the movie, and we were all too cheap to go anywhere for coffee, so we walked on the beach in the dark for about an hour. there was a lot of walking that night, actually, cause we were also too cheap to take a bus or a taxi to the theater. anyway, moonlit walks on the beach are fantastic.

then on thursday i went to my first baseball game. it was crazy. there's people wandering around selling the weirdest snacks, and souvenirs. and there's a big screen that is constantly showing people from the audience. the cameraman was completely avoiding me. i'm sure he was doing it on purpose. he must have been cause he showed everyone that was sitting around me, but always kept me out of it. i was getting a little offended. i even had a team jersey on that someone had lent me. i think mexicans are scared of redheads. or maybe it's just me. anyway, at the very end, i think it was the last inning, i got on screen twice. and i was so excited i got up to show off my shirt and gave a nice big thumbs up to everybody. people i didn't know were saying goodbye to me after the game, so that was cool. or embarassing. if i got embarassed by the stupid things i do. it's a good thing i don't.

i went swimming in the mexican ocean on friday for the first time. we had a bonfire on the beach, under the stars, and a few of us jumped in the waves for a while. i can't wait to try surfing. i was having so much fun, diving into a wave and just letting it twirl me aound and wash me up on shore. the water is so powerful, at times it was terrifying, but that just made it better. the adults had a hard time dragging us out when it was time to go.

i've been in service lots more in the past week. i'm still getting my bearings though. the weather is quite muggy again, so for the most part, people like to drive around in their air-conditioned cars and do calls... sound kinda familar? i try to do as much approach work and territory as i can. i have to build up some calls and studies. i had a really nice call today with a girl named rosa. unfortunately, she lives in tijuana. i was showing her the table of contents in the require brochure, and asked her if any of the titles interested her, and she picked "practices that God hates". i thought that was a little strange, but then she explained that her sister is having lots of trouble with her son. so she took the brochure in english for herself and in spanish for her sister. she wants me to call back on her sister, but i'll have to take a spanish sister with me cause she doesn't speak any english. i also talked to a woman at the wal-mart pharmacy counter. she took the magazines and i invited her to come to our meetings. now i have two rvs in wal-mart. that's how i justify shopping there.

and tonight we went to the circus. they have them here all the time apparently. it was quite funny. my camera still isn't working, but britanny took some pictures, so i'll try to post them later.