Yikes... I went almost three weeks without posting. I'm sorry to everyone who mentioned it to me and asked me to post waaaaayyyyy before this. I guess it's because last time I posted twice in one day! There is so much more to write about! I really don't know where to start. In my past posts I talked about how much it has rained and the "torrential downpourage". Up until last week, it had rained literally every day since we moved here. But, we have now been over a week rain-free! It's moved into October, which is apparently windy season. It's so windy, you can hear the buildings practically shaking. Sometimes I wake up in the morning to the wind so loud it sounds similar to the crazy loud rain we were finally getting used to. The locals think that it is just freezing when the wind blows like that. We think it feels pretty great. Since there's been no rain, there have hardly been any clouds. Last night when we were walking home from Reina's, we looked up and just stopped in awe. There are no words to describe how breathtakingly beautiful the stars were. We had seen a few from here before, but it's almost always cloudy. Last night was perfectly clear. We saw the Milky Way, a planet, and a kajillion stars. As cliche as it sounds, it's pretty amazing to think that I can see the same stars here that you all are seeing back home. :)


When we first arrived here, the Sunday morning church services were set up so that there was one big class combined for adults and kids, then a break, and then worship services for everyone as well. This meant that the kids weren't receiving any children's Bible class or anything that we're used to having in America. So Mom and I have been doing a children's class every Sunday morning during the first class. And of course, where do we start but with Genesis? So, we started with the days of creation.


Mom drew a picture for each of the seven days on a paper plate, and told them the story. Then we picked these 7 volunteers to line up in the right order with them. We put them in order the first time. The second time, we mixed them up in crazy orders, and let the kids figure out where they went. When all that was over, we had an art project. We had little coloring pages with birds on them and a verse about it from Genesis. They could color them, and when they were done I would come around and put glue dots on them and give them the bird's "feathers". They were just some cut up pieces of streamers, but the projects ended up looking great, and the kid's were so excited. They aren't used to doing things like that. In the schools, kid's don't get their own text books to work from; the schools can't afford that. The teacher has one, and they copy it onto the board and the kids copy it into their notebooks. That's almost all they do! They don't learn how to color, or cut, or make art projects.


The next week's class was a lot of fun for me. We were going over Adam and Eve and eating the forbidden fruit and whatnot. At the beginning of the class, Mom brought in a bowl of little cookies. She made sure to make it clear that no one was allowed to eat them, or even touch them. The kids were very serious about it. They said the understood, nodded, and looked super serious. At that point, Mom faked like she had forgotten something at home and had to go back over to the house. So she left, and I was in charge of the class. I walked over and picked up the cookie bowl. I looked around, and (in Spanish) asked, "Want a cookie?" The kids looked shocked at first. I said we had tons. Come on, just take one.. And every kid in the class gave in and took a cookie except two; Nathan, and a little girl named Gabby. When Mom came back into the class, most of them were still eating theirs. Some gasped when they saw her, some tried to hide the cookies or shove them into their mouths quickly. She acted like she was so sad that they'd taken her cookies, and what else did they do but blame me? "But Erin said!" "She gave them to us!" Stuff like that. We just moved on to the story. When it got to the part about blaming the serpent and everything, you could literally see a light come on in some of those kids' eyes. One of them looked at me, smiled, and shook her finger at me. Watching them really get the lesson was great. We did another craft and made little serpents with a verse on them.