The whirlwind of it all!

I’ve been living in Mexico for just about 2 weeks now, and the entire time it has been a complete whirlwind of awesome experiences. We started it off with a 7 day aid road trip down the Baja. Apparently LiveDifferent (formerly Absolute) hasn’t heard of starting off with the easy stuff, they’re more the “throw ’em in the deep end” type of group. Regardless of if we were ready to go or not though, by the end of it we were all as Nikki would say ” wilderness girls…and boy” and we all had piles of awesome stories to tell. It was an invaluable experience, that we thought would go unequaled…and it might still.

But once we returned home, we were shown that our time here will be spent well and that our every move with be worth something special to someone. We were asked to help out with some crafts classes lead by one of the women that went South with us, Diane, and gladly we agreed. Little did we know how much of a workout crafts can be.

Not 3 days after returning from our road trip, we loaded up in the bus and off to Bonita Garcia we went…craft supplies in hand. Diane got straight to work, once the women had assembled inside their makeshift church, teaching them how to make paper mache animals and some very pretty picture frames…while we stood around trying to figure out how we could help. It seemed there was a few extra English speaking bodies in the room, and all but one of us was able to be of any help to Diane and the other women, so we turned our attention to the kids. Defiantly the right choice.

Us 5 School of Leadership students spent the next 3 or more hours coloring, tickling and running around with the 15 or so kids that were there. I spent my day running after 2 little girls more often than any others, chasing them around our bus but never actually catching them. The rest of the SOL’s gave piggy back rides, played Stella Ella Hola with them, and tried to play some football (American style) with them. It didn’t seem to matter too much what we were doing, as long as we were with them and we were smiling along with them (which frankly, is hard to do when they are having so much fun). Although we could not speak to them, each one of them are in our hearts and each one of them has spent time showing us how important our actions can be. Their little eyes told us each how much those few hours meant to them, to have someone play exclusively with them…to have their own personal jungle gym for a few hours.

So all I can really say now is… I wonder what amazing things next week will bring? (Kristi)