San Diego

Two weeks ago I was in San Diego. After our last week of camp we had a short break before we dove into our fall activities. Eunice's parents had paid for a hotel room in San Diego for the duration of the break as a gift to her and she invited me to join her and Steph on the trip. It was a fun getaway. We didn't see a whole lot of San Diego, but we did some shopping (there are some things that are actually cheaper to buy in the States than in Mexico...well, at Wal-Mart anyway), they got their hair done, Eunice and I got pedicures, and we relaxed. I tried "In-N-Out" for the first time there. It's a fast food hamburger chain that I had never heard of prior to our trip. It was yummy! We also went to La Jolla while there. La Jolla is an area (I'm not sure if it is actually part of San Diego or not) where they have some nice beaches and a cove. The cove was neat...definitely too many people there for my liking though. Here's Eunice and I on the stairs down into the cove.

I got to go to a Korean Mart while there (Eunice is Korean, just fyi). And I was excited to try some Korean food while there...just to find out later that what I had was actually a Korean version of a Japanese dish (kind of like how we "Americanize" food from other cultures). I was amazed at all the different kinds of food that they sell there. They even had dried fish in bags. It was...interesting. Here I am...eating at the Korean mart. :)

I did, however, get to try a real Korean dessert. I'm not quite sure what the name of it is. I don't remember. It contains ice, various kinds of fruit (strawberries, kiwi, bananas, peaches), little mini-marshmallow looking things, sweet beans and ice cream. It was an interesting combination...not something I would want all the time, but I enjoyed it. Here is one angle of it, to give you an idea of what it looked like.

We were in San Diego from Sunday (the 23rd, I think) to Wednesday. Our trip back to Ensenada consisted of riding the trolley (wow, those things get packed) to the border, walking with our bags and Korean groceries to the bus station (it was a much longer walk than we expected), and then riding a bus back to Ensenada where Greg (co-founder of Genesis) picked us up and took us to the office. It felt like a lengthy trip. Overall, we had a short, but fun vacation.

Beach Camp continued...

Thursday and Friday we went to the beach. Another organization let us use a house they have for our meals and other activities. On Thursday we started out with a relay race on the beach and then the kids had free time until lunch. During free time the kids got to try surfing or sea kayaking. Or they could play in the water or in the sand. I spent awhile on Thursday helping one of the kids look for hermit crabs. We found a lot. It made me a little worried about my feet. We had spaghetti for lunch and we ate it on the beach. The kids were not given forks to make it more fun. At first we were under the impression that we (the staff and amigos) were not supposed to eat with forks either, so we started smuggling them to where we were eating. We then found out it was fine for us to use them, so we didn't have to be discrete anymore. After lunch we played another game. It involved hitting targets with water balloons using a big sling shot. The kids had a lot of fun...and somehow managed to not get hurt. Then there was pudding eating. With no hands. I chose to watch and was glad when I saw the chocolate pudding that Greg had smeared in Amanda's ear. It was fun to watch though. :) That was followed by more free time in the water until we left to eat dinner at the Ranch.

Then there was Friday. I'll honestly admit that I didn't do much with the kids on Friday. But I had a whole lot of fun. There were a lot of adults around so I didn't feel like I was abandoning children. It was also much cooler and a little rainy (first and only rain I have seen since coming here) due to a hurricane somewhere to the south, which caused less kids to be in the water. I was only in the water because I borrowed a wet suit (wow, those things are awesome!) from one of the amigos. I decided to be adventurous Friday and it was great. I tried surfing (made it up on one foot and a knee) and sea kayaking (super fun, but I capsized on the way back into shore). A couple staff and a few amigos stayed in the water while the kids went to eat lunch, which is when I got my first surfing lessons. Once the kids came back, I went up and ate lunch. Upon returning I found that the kids weren't kayaking, so I asked if I could try. I have never kayaked and have only canoed on rivers, so this was a different experience. I want to try it again sometime. After that I played in the water some and then surfed a little more. I got out of the water once Eunice came and asked me to help organize the girls to take showers. The orphanage staff sent two volunteers with the group to act as their staff (each orphanage has to send staff with their kids). The volunteers did a great job and all would have been fine except that they had to leave Thursday at lunch to go home to Washington state. So, at that point they no longer had any staff. One of the niños was 19 and very helpful with the boys, but that left us in charge of the girls. That made things interesting. Fortunately, they were well-behaved and we didn't really have any problems.

Friday night we had a luau of sorts. We ate various kinds of meat and rice with pineapple in it. I did some "hula" dancing with a couple of the amigas and staff. That was funny. It was very impromptu. For dessert the amigos served the kids dirt. Well, dirt that was actually crunched up oreos, pudding and gummy worms. It was served out in flower pots and the kids dug through it with their hands. It's an understatement to say that they had fun. :)

Saturday was the day for the kids to go home. They were supposed to stay until lunch, but their staff that showed up the night before had other plans and wanted to get them back. It was the saddest farewell of the summer. I was holding together pretty well until I saw that one of the boys had tears rolling down his cheeks. It was impossible not to cry after seeing that. On the bright side it was super cool to see what an impact we (staff and amigos) had on the kids in such a short amount of time. Despite language barriers and chaos, you could tell that the kids (especially the older ones) had really had a wonderful week. It was sad to say good bye to them, and sad to realize that this was the end of the summer camps. After the kids left, the staff and amigos prayed together. We prayed for the kids, we thanked God for the week we had, and prayed for the Ranch in general. It was wonderful and encouraging. I tend to be a little on the uncomfortable side when praying out loud with other people, but it was so great to look back on the week and praise God for what He did and to pray for the precious children that had just left us to return to their normal lives. It was uplifting to think that God has a plan for each of those kids and that He is watching over them even when we can't be there with them. After praying, we did some cleaning and ate lunch then headed into Ensenada. From there I will pick up tomorrow with the week after the camps...

But, before I end for today....thought you might be amused to see a picture of my attempt at surfing. If you've never tried it, you should....it's fun. :)

I'm back!

I know it's been awhile, but I have returned to fill you in on the last couple weeks. We have now transitioned from summer camps and spending most of our time at the Ranch to more of our year round activities and spending more time with the nearby communities.

I just realized that it has been 3 weeks since my last post -- wow! So, the first of those 3 weeks was our last week of camp. It was very different from the other weeks of camp. It was a beach/surf camp. But the beach/surf part didn't start until Thursday. We had only one orphanage and 2 groups of amigos come, but the amigos did not arrive until Wednesday. Thus, we structured all the activities for Monday and Tuesday. We ended up doing some very different things than usual. Monday we spent most of the day in downtown Ensenada. We spent some time near the water (we got to see two seals kiss...it was really cute) and we walked through the fish market (it was really smelly). The cooks from the Ranch brought lunch to us (tuna sandwiches) and after lunch the kids got to play on a play ground for awhile. We then walked around some more of downtown Ensenada and got the kids small ice cream cones from McDonald's.

Tuesday we did Discovery activities with the kids in the morning and then headed off to Jersey Park after lunch. We then found out that Jersey Park is closed on Tuesdays, so we went to La Bufadora instead. La Bufadora is a blowhole located at the end of a peninsula near Ensenada. The water can shoot up pretty high at times. I didn't get to see it from a very good angle, so I didn't take any pics or videos, but there are some on youtube if you're interested. There are lots of shops on the walk up to La Bufadora. I didn't do any shopping (we were with the kids and I didn't bring money since I was planning on going to Jersey Park), but I have been told that all the prices there are subject to bargaining. Supposedly, you can get a pretty good price on stuff if you're willing to hold your ground.

Wednesday morning we went for the hike that we usually do on Fridays. It was kind of sad realizing that that would probably be the last time I would do that hike. When we returned to the camp the amigos had arrived. It was a pretty chaotic afternoon. We did a few activities to help the amigos and niños get to know each other. From there on we (the staff) just tried to help the amigo groups with what they had planned. They had brought VBS-type teachings with them, which they mostly led with some of our help.

This is getting long, so I'm going to upload it and then working on writing about the rest of surf/beach camp!

For your viewing amusement....

This is what happened when Eunice and I stayed behind at the Ranch to do some cleaning while everyone else went to Jersey Park on Friday.



They are animal hats. Eunice's is an elephant and mine's a lion...I think.

Las montañas

We climb a mountain with the niños every Friday. Usually we don't quite go all the way to the top, but we went the little extra distance to the top this week. I took some pictures of the valley the Ranch is in. I also have a picture of the group at the top of the mountain. Hope you enjoy!





The Ranch is down there, somewhere.

Week 4

Every week we do certain activities. On Mondays and Tuesdays we do Discovery activities (see previous blog about those) and Vacation Bible School-type activities. We use a story called "Sydney y(and) Norman" for VBS. From what I have been able to learn of the story, it sounds really great. I plan to read it in English when I get home. What I can tell you is that it's about 2 pigs that have an encounter with God that effects them in different ways (both positive). You should read the rest for yourself -- I'm going to. ;) We also play games, do crafts, and go over a memory verse during VBS.

This past week we went to the beach on Wednesday. We first go on a nature walk near the beach. During the nature walk the ninos get to look for crabs and shells. Then we eat lunch, and after that we play in the ocean. I had a lot of fun jumping waves with a few of the girls this week. It's definitely not as warm here as it is going to the ocean in the Carolinas. Still fun though.

On Thursday we went to Baja Mar. Baja Mar is a private community that is largely inhabited by retired Americans. The kids get golf lessons and get to practice hitting the ball at the community's driving range. They also have a lot of fun picking up all the golf balls before and after they use the range. It's like a really easy Easter egg hunt or something. Baja Mar residents donated hot dogs, chips, and cake for our lunch Thursday. It was really nice of them. They usually do pbj's, so this week was extra special. After lunch the ninos have a putting tournament and then everyone gets prizes. The kids have a blast. They end up coming back to the Ranch with a t-shirt and a couple prizes.

The ninos this week loved the game Uvas (Grapes). It's basically a type of tag. One person is the Uva and stands in the middle of the field, while everyone else starts at one end of the playing field. The Uva shouts "uvas" and all the other players have to run across the playing field without getting tagged. If the Uva tags you, you have to stand in the place you were tagged and then use your arms to tag other people as they run past. I included one picture of the ninos playing ovas in this week's slide show.

That's a little bit of this week (and our weeks in general). I may post some more this weekend...we'll see...

Let's see...

I am currently listening to NeedtoBreathe and trying to decide what to share with all of you this week. I think I may tell you about some of the pictures that I posted in this week's slide show. This week was very fun. We had a great group of kids. It was this particular orphanage's first time coming to the Ranch, so it was fun to see them get to have so many new experiences. I'm going to caption pictures and then do some more blogging. :)

Another weekend coming to a close...

...and, as usual, I didn't get as much posted as I would have liked. I hope you enjoyed what I did manage to post though. It's been a busier than usual weekend and a fun one. I hope everyone has a wonderful week and I will post more next weekend! I have 2 more weeks of camp and then I will be spending more time at the office. Hasta luego!

Discovery

On most Mondays and Tuesdays we do "Discovery" with the ninos. Our Discovery activities have to do with the 5 senses and how God gave them to us to experience the world. We do at least one activity with each sense. I took a few pictures this week of Discovery that I thought I would share.



In this activity, the girl with the eye patch is trying to hit the two pencils together. The kids have fun laughing at each other when they see how hard it is. It also demonstrates how having 2 eyes helps our depth perception.



Stephanie is helping one of the ninos figure out an optical illusion card.



Stephanie and Alejandro were doing a listening activity where the ninos had to identify which sounds were the same.



We played duck, duck, goose with two brushes. They weren't supposed to say anything...you knew if you were a duck or goose based on the type of brush they touched your hand with. One brush was soft the other was coarse.

There's a little peak into the Discovery activities. They are basically a mixture of educational information and activities. They're fun. :)

Clean Tent!

So, last Saturday (not this past one, but the one before) Rachel and I cleaned our tent. It looked so much better than it had in the previous pictures I showed you that I wanted to post some new pictures. The pictures don't do our hard work justice, but you'll at least get some idea of the improvement.

Last Week's Video

The video I was uploading last weekend didn't have a chance to finish before I had to leave, so here it is.

A little bit of this weekend

I took a couple pictures and a video this morning, so I thought I would share them with you.

These two pictures were taken after church this morning. This one is of me, Rachel and Eunice.


This one is of the three of us girls, Alejandro and Eric.


After church I went out to eat with a few people. We went to a pizza place that serves breakfast in the mornings. I had their breakfast special: 2 pancakes, 2 eggs, and meat (I had bacon). On the way back to the office they took me up a steep hill that overlooks much of Ensenada. It's a huge city. Here are a couple of pictures and a video. In the video I say that there are about 400,000 people who live in Ensenada. There are actually closer to 600,000 people. I was off a little. ;)

Note: Katie's video didn't finish uploading before she had to pack up her stuff and leave, so unfortunately the video is unavailable at this time. -B





I'm short on time this weekend (and, unfortunately will be most weekends) so this is all I will have time to post for now. I hope everyone is doing great and that you have a wonderful week. I will share more info and more pictures next weekend. Bye for now!

My Home on the Ranch

This week I took a few pictures of the tent/dorm that I live in and some of the other amenities I use at Rancho Genesis. There are 3 bunk beds in my tent, carpet, and a couple of plastic shelves that we keep some of our stuff on. I was living in there with Ceci and Rachel up until Friday when Ceci left to go back to college. The picture(s) that I will have on here show it really messy, but Rachel and I cleaned it up this morning so it looks a lot better now (I'll try to remember to take another picture before we mess it up again).





The shower the staff use on the Ranch is constructed of a wooded frame and blue tarp-like material. It's open to the sky and you can easily hear everything going on near the shower while you are in there. It's a little strange. I'm not used to having conversations with people while they are showering (the shower is right next to my tent). We have 2 water options for our showers. We can either use a solar bag (which only works if you remember to fill one up) or the piped in water from the tanks. Solar bags provide great warm water up when you remember to fill them and are able to take a shower before it cools down outside.





We have really nice bathrooms at the Ranch. A very fancy hole in the ground. :) I didn't take a picture of the inside of the outhouses, but it's basically a toilet seat on a bench over a large, deep hole. Next to the outhouse we have a large blue barrel that serves as our hand/foot/face washing station and next to that is an igloo that contains the water we use to brush our teeth. It's far from fancy, but it works.



Now you've seen most of my new home. I haven't taken any pictures of Genesis's office where I stay on the weekends and where I will be staying when the camps are over at the Ranch. I will try to remember to take and post some of those over the next few weeks.

Food in Mexico

Well, I really can't be too general about the way I talk about the food in Mexico because I really haven't experienced that much of it. I have been to a couple of taco stands (they call them "stands", but they are small restaurants, not street vendors) and they were really good. They aren't your usual American, Taco Bell tacos -- everything is made fresh in front of you and the salsa is a good bit more spicy. I haven't seen chicken offered at either of the stands I have been to, so I usually get beef. I also had guacamole, cilantro, a couple beans, salsa and a squeeze of lime on the two tacos I had today. They were good. :)

Food at the Ranch is good as well. They serve tortillas at almost every meal during the week (they don't serve them with breakfast and the don't serve them when they do tuna salad). We also eat a lot of rice during the week. The type of meat and the vegetables it is mixed with change throughout the week, but you can always count on lots of tortillas and rice. I took a picture of two different meals last week and I will try to do more in the future. The first picture was taken of the tuna salad meal. In the second picture we had a pot roast-ish meal with baby carrots, small potatoes, and chicken along side (can you guess?) rice and two tortillas.

Week 2

Hello Everyone! I can't believe week 2 of my trip here is over! It's been a good week. We were missing a couple staff this week, so we were extra busy filling in for the missing people. The group I worked with this week consisted of both an Amigo group (youth group) and a Nino group (orphanage), so it was a bit different from last week. I didn't end up getting to interact with the ninos as much due to each nino being paired with an amigo. It was great for the ninos though because they got a lot of one-on-one attention that I am sure they do not usually get at their orphanage.

So...

I didn't get as much written this weekend as I had hoped, but I will post more next weekend. I'm going to try to post a few pics before I go to sleep. I just got back from eating a late dinner with Eunice at a taco stand called Mk Taco...can you guess where they were going with that?? ;) It was good. I really wish I spoke more Spanish though. I feel rather helpless here quite often. But, I'm around helpful people who do speak Spanish and I am very thankful for that. I hope everyone has a wonderful week and I look forward to reading some comments next weekend! Also, if you saw that I did not email someone that you think I should have...please forward them the email from earlier...I tried to catch everyone I could, but I probably missed a few.

Week 1: Sunday Night -- Monday

Sunday night when I arrived at the Ranch I was given a tour of the staff area which consists of the tents with carpeted floors and bunk beds that we sleep in, an outhouse, a shower open to the sky, a toothbrushing and hand-washing station, and a covered area with chairs and a plastic picnic table for staff to hang out and have meetings/devotions. I did not have to do much Sunday night besides get settled into my new home.

Monday morning I had to be at Staff Devotions at 7:40am. One of the staff read out of a devotion book, read some scripture, we briefly discussed it, and prayed. Then it was time for breakfast. After breakfast we had a staff planning meeting to get ready for the Nino (there's an imaginary squiggly line over the 2nd "n") groups that were coming in a couple hours. I was helping with the upper camp (we usually have 2 groups: lower camp and upper camp each week) and we did not have an Amigo group with us, so we had more planning to do than the staff helping the other camp.

Our ninos showed up an hour earlier than they were supposed to (10:30am)so the other staff went through the rules with them and then we played games with them until it was time for lunch.

After lunch I tried to keep the kids from hurting themselves or each other while they had some free time. After free time we did some VBS activities that involved a story, a craft, and some games. Ceci, one of the staff, was really fun to watch tell the story (it was about 2 pigs, one arrogant and the other always felt inferior, and how they both experienced God's love), she was so expressive and fun in her delivery. During this time I became acutely aware of how the difficult the language barrier was going to be.

That afternoon the kids took showers and then we fed them dinner (there are ladies that come in from Ensenada that do the cooking...we just passed out the plates, wiped down the tables, etc.). Then they had some more free time, during which I got a break while another staff watched the kids. And, finally, we had a campfire for the ninos during which they sang songs and shared their favorite part of the day. The campfires were always fun. It's neat to watch kids sing worship songs in another language. I'm slowly learning the lyrics to a couple of the songs.

I went to bed not long after the campfire. I was pretty tired between the time change and the busy-ness. It was an interesting first day.

The Trip to Mexico

My flights went well. There was a little turbulence on both flights, but nothing major. I was picked up at the airport by one of Genesis's summer staff named Bob. He works at the Ranch (where we do the summer camps) from Sunday to Wednesday every week all summer long. We met the Amigo group (youth group) that helped out last week at a Burger King a few minutes from the Mexico/US border and Bob shared some information with the group about crossing the border and the trip down to the Ranch.

Crossing the border was interesting. It was strange to see guards with huge guns standing around watching everything. Crossing into Mexico took very little time. They checked to see what the Amigo group was carrying (they had brought a big trailer for all of their stuff) and they wanted to know why we were going into the country. Then we were on our way. However, the line for going into the US was super long and slow-moving. Hopefully when I head back across it won't be too backed up.

The scenery on the way down to the Ranch was interesting. We stayed relatively close to the ocean the whole time and I got to see how much different the shoreline was to what I am used to. From the road we were driving on, it dropped off pretty steeply to the water and the coastline was super rocky. Very pretty, but not a good place to try to build a sand castle.

I took some pictures of the scenery, but they didn't turn out very well. I may try to post some of the more decent ones if I figure out how to do that. There were a number of pretty houses near the coast and even some condos. Many of the condo buildings are not finished due to the slump in the economy. There are also a lot of homes in rough shape and a lot of dirt. Mexico seems to be short on grass, but makes up for it with dirt.

We (Bob, myself, and the Amigo group) met most of the summer staff at a taco stand about 30 minutes from the Ranch for dinner around 5 o'clock. It was really good. They also had coke there in glass bottles...good stuff. Once we finished eating we loaded up and drove the last bit of the trip to the Ranch.

Hey Everybody!

This is Katie now. :) I have now been in Mexico for a whole week! It has definitely been a very interesting week. Thanks for checking out my blog. I will try to keep it updated every week when I have internet access.

1st Post!

Ok, so this isn't actually Katie writing (yet)...Bryan set this up for me in case I want to journal some of my experiences and share them with my friends and family back home. So come back and check weekly, as hopefully I'll be able to share some of my experiences with you!