Week Three: Welcome Home!

Sign the Kids made for all the new volunteers

Villa Ballester...what a great place to be welcomed to!  The people are so great here and I feel so welcomed and at home.  The first day at my new church the children were so excited and they made me two really big signs.

Church courtyard and classrooms

Church

New cat neighbor

I love the church it is great...nice and Lutheran but in Spanish.  It has been really fun and interesting to attend church services in Spanish.  It is especially great because I can understand everything.  The church is connected to an old hacienda that is now the church offices and a residence for women.  The church also has another building that is a residence for women, some classrooms, a nice big patio, and a little soccer field for the kids.  Every Sunday I get to hang out with the kids.  Last week I got to play soccer for 4 hours and I LOVED IT!  I will defiantly get my fill of soccer here and I am very excited! 

Playing futbol for the first time with the youth at Church

I am living in a great apartment near the church.  After living in a college dormitory for four years this is the Ritz!  The apartment is almost twice the size of a typical dorm room and I have my own bathroom and kitchen.  Plus everything is very new because they just renovated the apartment one year ago.  I could not have hoped for anything better.  I am so thankful that I get to live here for one year!  Plus, one of my new friends showed me a great park to run in! 

My Bed!

My Closet and Picture wall.

My Bathroom!

View of kitchen and closet from living room/ dinning room.

My living room.

View into my bedroom from living room.

Dinning room!

I am getting used to cooking for myself.  It has been a little difficult going from the St. Olaf cafeteria (Fifth school in the nation for yummy food) to Cafe a la Rachel; but I am having fun experimenting with new cooking ideas.  It is also quite the experience going to the super market...the food is so different here and the mentality for quantities and how often one goes to the grocery store is very unlike the American mentality.  I think we eat a lot more food and everything is always so big!  Here one bag of cereal gives me about two bowls.  I guess cereal is not something they eat much of...but I basically live off the stuff...and don't even ask me about the milk haha...still trying to figure that out.  Overall everything is soooo exciting and new...it is fun to be una extranjera (a foreigner).  I am learning a lot about how this culture works.  I have also discovered that fried bananas are amazingly yummy and I cannot stop eating them. 

My new kitchen!