q frio santa cruz

days left in santa cruz=3 days til j-town=10

wow it is so cold that i can see my breath while i type this. ok maybe that´s an untruth, but yesterday i could see my breath in the house, on the micro, outside, everywhere pretty much. the newspaper says that monday will be the coldest day in july in 29 years...3 degrees Celcius (ay señor! exlaimed papi). that´s probably around 36 degrees F. holy my body will be an ice cube. i know the majority of my reading audience is from the cold state of michigan and may be thinking "wow corrie has turned into a softie," but you are going through a hot summer and your houses have furnaces! here homes are made to keep the heat out - high ceilings, single paned windows that don´t close, tile floors, etc. and no we don´t have furnaces or heaters. the only place that is warm is bed, if you wear 2 pairs of socks 3 sweaters 2 pairs of pants and a hat. which i have been doing. a plus is that we break often to drink hot drinks. so i´ve been drinking coffee, choco-like, and api all day. api is a hot drink made out of purple corn with lots of sugar and cinammon. yum.

my last day at cento menno was wednesday. we celebrated with some pie and it wasn´t too busy, which was nice because i suddenly remembered all the things i said i would do before i left that i still had to do! hopefully i left good enough instructions and a clean desk! had one last crazy request that made a good end to my time at centro menno. someone called 3 different times telling us "hola yo necesito una avioneta." yes, they were asking for an airplane. they didn´t want to buy one, just borrow it to fly from san jose to santa cruz. the first time they called i thought they were asking for a vagoneta, a kind of taxi, so i explained that we were an office with a library and newspapers and hung up. the second caller spoke in low german and we told him no and suggested he call someone else. the third time a woman called an spoke very s-l-o-w-l-y and clearly to make sure i understood she needed an airplane. i ended up cracking up on the phone and apologizing for our lack of airplanes.

since today is so cold, the normal saturday afternoon of watching fútbol all day is canceled. but tonight i am having my despedida (goodbye party) with my host family at a restaurant popular for its ice cream. we may have to pass on dessert. so unreal. and tomorrow i will move out and they will drive me to MCC where we will have a little coffee time and say our goodbyes. also unreal and really sad. ok don´t want to think about that anymore!

we fly out july 21 at 1:30am, have a layover in miami, and will arrive in philly around 6pm. i will be in akron, pa until july 26 for re-entry and will be home july 27. huzzah!

michigan seems like a dream to me now...

you sang it simon/garfunkel. it is now july. i will be leaving santa cruz july 21 at 1:30am. and the goodbye process has already begun. i´ve filled out end-of-term reports, trained kathy to take over, and have had 1 goodbye dinner. and my host niece natalia is very excited about the potential drama that takes place with goodbyes and has filled my cell-phone inbox with late night text messages of TKM (te quiero mucho) and constantly reminds i will NEVER know how much she will miss me. part of me is grateful that all of this is forcing me to own up to the fact that i am leaving and to prepare myself for it. but part of me still wants to pretend i´m not going anywhere so i won´t have to say goodbye to people that have become such an important part of my life.

but i am having a fun last few weeks spending time with my host family and friends and enjoying "normal" life that may not seem so normal in a month.

kathy and i completely captivated with packaging the menno bote =>

mundial! seems like we are either watching a game or talking about it. it´s awesome. there is a big screen set up in the plaza and on one sunday afternoon i watched some of a brazil game here. the fans are crazy.

we visited a mennonite cheese factory where they make 600 kilos of mozarella cheese every day! i don´t know what i was expecting, but i felt let down when there were just a couple of guys stirring big tubs of milk.

but the cheese was delicious!

and the link below is the yearbook for the SALT year 2009-2010. SALT volunteers from all over the world wrote about their experiences and sent in pictures. ignore what i wrote because i sound like a complete loser, but they other SALTers have a lot of insight to offer.

http://salt.mcc.org/SALTyearbook_2010.pdf