Eventful couple weeks = long post w/ lots of pictures!

The title speaks for itself here, this is a REALLY long post...so here goes:

Firstly, one afternoon, while hanging out with Lucero, Alicia, and Gisel:

We built some awesome card towers. The girls did great!

Lucero (above)

Alicia (again, above)

Gisel (you guessed it, above)

Alicia also built a cool jenga tower:

Big...

Bigger....

Biggest!

We also had quite the saga of building a huge Lego tower....and yes, we cheated by leaning it against the wall...

(guest appearance by Darilis)

Ruh-roh.

Repairing...

Higher than the clock = Success!!

We also frosted some cupcakes, always an adventure.. :)

And the girls took quite a few pictures, of which the following is a sample:

How I love this little face. :)

:)

Yeah, these are just some really cool photos. What photographers we have on our hands here. :)

The blurry face below and to the left is Kyann, whose presence was immensely enjoyed this week. :) The girls and I were greeting the group of Chicago and Friends at this point.

I spend a lot of my time here driving all over creation, so some amigas accompanied me on my route a couple of times this past week:

Girls night out with Ely (my roommate) and a few Chicago girls...so fun and much needed. mmm, delicious frozen mango and giant fruit salad....

The purple shirt club (not planned) at the top of the cross mountain:

Lisa left with the team this morning. :(. She is missed already.

Depicted above are Lisa and I in our room...really not the greatest moment for a picture....since I had just climbed a mountain and she had just taken a shower, but at least it is documentation of our togetherness, and it is a lot better than some other of our other photo attempts, hehe. Below are Ely Lisa and I, who have all shared a room for the past 3 weeks.  And it has been terrific. :)

In conclusion, here are some more fun pics of kids:

The kids with the chickens for their "4H" fair...some of the poor chickens are still alive... :)

Some of our super Middle School guys:

Below: I have been spending quite a bit of time with these boys, Giezzy (on the left, pronounced "Jesse"), and Julian (right). Julian likes to sing and has an awesome voice for a 1st grader. He taught me a song in Spanish, which is the Spanish version of "nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess I'll go eat worms". It is pretty fantastic. One day, I asked him what other songs he likes. He started singing "Tu eres todo poderoso", which is a really cool Spanish Praise song, meaning "You are all-powerful". We sang the chorus over and over at the top of our lungs one afternoon in the van. Very cool moment.

THEN, a couple days after that, he was singing another song. He was mumbling the words. I thought I recognized the tune but thought, "Surely he wouldn't know THAT song..." However, sure enough, he was singing the American 80's pop song, "You spin me right round, Baby, right round, like a record, Baby, right round, round round." haha, no joke. But he didn't know the words (they are in English), so he just mumbled them.

Giezzy with a flower he made from a palm leaf. (Someone had just taught him how.). Pretty awesome, huh?

(I was maybe thinking of A certain floral-designing roommate of mine as I snapped this one)

And that is finally all! Oh, except for this gratuitous photo of a stuffed penguin lying face down in the mess hall refrigerator:

I found him this way one morning...and left him like that, figuring that a penguin would appreciate some refrigeration in this July heat :).