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