I hung out with the E.C. crew as much as I could today in between spurts of acting responsible. In fact, Angela and Jerry even left me with “their” gringos to do a Basilica orientation today. Wacky.
A theme of the day for me was going places and eating. I woke up about in time for lunch (it was both an early meal and I slept until almost 10:00 today, only the second time I’ve been in bed past 7:00 all summer) with Christ Episcopal Y Amigos and took off after the Basilica to shop for my team with Sarah. Then it was pretty much right back to dinner at Pinchos with the Elizabeth City gringos. I had to say good-bye for at least a few days, and possibly for the summer when we got back to Extreme Response. With River Oak on the ground tonight and leaving the same day as EC, I don’t know what the possibility of hanging out with them again will look like. I’ve pretty much had to learn to just switch of thinking about it as I hug and besito people good-bye in the moment. Still not fun.
Then it was off to the Jensens’ for Tory’s going away get-together. We had ice cream and hang-out time and played “Speed UNO.” But it was weird when we did the traditional Youth World good-bye. That consists of the person leaving giving us a run-down of their plans for the months ahead and some prayer requests, and then a popcorn prayer for them. I’ve been present for Justin, Rachel, Jenny, and Ashley to do this, but simply because of comparative sheer amount of time spent with the rest of the group, Tory is and has been one of the gang since day one of training, and she’s truly not leaving too far ahead of the rest of us. It just really hit home both that she’s flying off at 9am and that sixteen days isn’t really long for the rest of us.
Even stranger was the fact that I’m “back on” tonight, and as we say at El Refugio, it’s time to “be [all] here now” for River Oak Grace Community Church and Block 4. We picked them up at the airport with Ashley (who will be tagging along with us through our time in Shandia and maybe HER as this is one of her supporting churches). It was also strange to roll onto Nelson’s bus with only 16 bodies after hauling around 41+ for ten days, but I think I actually know everyone’s name the first night so I’m stoked about that. We’ve also got another group of prayers, I can tell already, and I love it (prayers as in verb: “pray” noun: “-ers”).
Tomorrow’s the Basillica, Alliance Academy International, YW/Partnership/other orientations, Fruiteria and Pinchos. Basically a lot of my day today over again except I have to be a real host. Maybe that will at least take my mind off the many people I love with whom I won’t be in direct contact. But that shouldn’t be too hard knowing that I’m headed back to Shandia!
(EDIT: Observation- I love how my writings tend to include the word “gringos” as a categorizer as if I’m not one).
hey, gringo
hey, it works here also