day eleven and a half

As I write these updates each day, I sit and wonder where exactly they are being read, and who exactly is reading what I write. It would be good to know as I continue on this adventure, who is actually taking time to follow along with my adventures. If you wouldnt mind doing this RIGHT NOW so you dont forget, open a new window and just send me a quick email (to the following address) saying who you are and where you are at. Also, being in Bolivia with limited internet access and time, it will allow me to have the addresses of those who are following so if I decide to send a group email at some time, you would be included on this.

Gracias my awesome followers :)

adidashue@gmail.com

day eleven

Discussion, discussion and more discussion. This is starting to be the theme for this week. As for last week we discovered the city and learned about it. This week, I feel that we are discovering each other's inside colors and learning about that. Makes me wonder what the next two weeks will involve. Will we finally discuss and learn about the cultures we are going to be serving in? Doubtful...

As we huddled in our living room, each person in a different mindset, we are forced to discuss, in depth, different questions. Now, to throw people together and FORCE them to converse about deep subjects at a given time is no way to get anything productive done. These things have to come in on their own. Instead, I feel like I sat through an awkward session on people feeling like they had to share thoughts an opinions to make someone of greater authority happy that we are "getting along." In all reality, the conversation seemed to put me in a different mindset about a lot of the situations we debate about than the mindsets of the other participants.

I feel that tensions were a bit high near the end, and everyone wanted to do their own things. A China team member and myself escaped to catch the El downtown and go hit up Shed Aquarium. However, when we got there, they wanted me to fork over 35 hard earned dollars. We were prepared for 25, but the simple increase of $10 is a bit much to ask. I may sound cheap, but, in all reality, I am. While the day was not wasted, we found many new areas to attempt getting a good image of the cityscape of downtown Chicago.

day ten

As the day come to a start, it was another day full of discussion about life and the adventures that we have had with God on our side. As I sat listening, I heard questions about religion and life that many friends and I have discussed at college, as well as even some of the same thoughts that I have wrestled with in my walk. I started noticing (I had noticed earlier, but never really thought about it) that my entire group is at a stage in life I was in 6 years ago as I was entering college. I realized that the year, with the group, will be more of a year of helping others compared to be the one learning. Of course I will learn from these individuals as well, but, at this point it is hard to see this part.

For an evening activity, we went to a local nonprofit that helps male prostitutes and heard some of their stories about life on the street and having to sell themselves to other men for money just to "stay alive." It was a very interesting evening, and made me realize something I never had been exposed to in this crazy world! At the end, they passed out business cards and books of matches that had their name, logo and address all over them. Now lets think about this, what happens when you give 12 20-year olds a book of matches each? Nothing good comes from it. We wasted almost every pack we had trying to light every match and get a quality picture of someone holding it in their mouth! Of course I had to join in...

day nine

I once heard it is hard to know where you are going, unless you know where you have been. (pretty sure it was from the movie HITCH. who would have known will smith could actually teach a good life lesson huh?) I feel that this really came to use, as Radical Journey requires us to share our life and faith stories and adventures in front on the people on our country team. This has always been something that is hard for me to do. Not physically hard, but emotionally. I have no problem talking, which I am sure that most of you know, but, the hard part comes when I try to hide my emotional side that I feel is a weakness! It was good to let these emotions out and letting my group know that I am not the "hardass" that I am sure my personality has led on. Just the other day the group was talking about crying, and the last time they had. Darrell, the director, looked at me and made some comment close to the following. "I bet it takes quite a bit to get you to cry, huh?" If he only knew!

As my story started pouring out of my mouth, my adventures in Miami and memories started coming into my thoughts about my boys down there sand where they are at today, and how they are living in such a place that most cant even imagine. As the words came, so did the tears, and then I looked up in the back of the room and saw some artwork that I had not noticed yet since being here at JPUSA. And as I looked at this artwork, I noticed that the lamps said "Love," "Faith" and "Hope," and then had the trinity symbol cut out of the bottom. Just below them were the two paintings that were bursting with color and seemed to be shouting stories! I dont know exactly what it was, if anything, that God was trying to say, but it gave me such a peace for the coming year as I just sat and stared at these paintings while my eyes dried up and continued on with sharing my journey!

day eight

The first day of sleeping in and really relaxing. After becoming full conscious about noon and hitting up some rice and beans for lunch, a group was walking down the street a few blocks to the beach. Who woulda ever known that there was a beach in Chicago? I have known it was on a HUGE lake since the first time I saw it on a map, HOWEVER, I just never really thought about a city in the middle of the country, no where near an ocean, having a beach.

Each group was supposed to go to a designated church that spoke the language that would be spoke in their future immersion location. China started at 10:30 AM and England started at 4 PM. Bolivia was unaware of what time we went to church so instead of looking, I just decided to go to the beach with England. I was there just enough time to take a picture of the 34532 dogs in attendance and then receive a phone call saying out church started in and hour and took longer than that to get there.

Basically, I ran back to the house, quickly showered and the team bolted as fast as we could to our church and made it only five minutes late. The service is usually only in Spanish, but, due to five caucasian English speakers walking in to a church of 12 people, one of them decided to translate for us. I was glad, because my Spanish is not quite to the point it needs to be for the coming year, but soon it will be there!

day seven

As everyone was getting ready in the morning, were was a silent chill in the air. Settling in is over as this is starting to feel more like a permanent home. We are starting to just go about life only in a new place which is awesome!

Or maybe it was the man none of us knew sitting on our couch awkwardly playing a game on his iPod touch. When a group is comfortable together and you throw in a new variable such as this, it always takes away the original comfort. This particular man was the man who was going to blindfold us all, lock us in his van, and drive us to a part of the city that we had no idea where it was. And the sick part of this, is that we knew he was there to do this and we ALL were going to go along with this. He was the husband of one of the directors and it was his role to test our ability to get around this city using public transportation. As country teams, we were going to be dropped off after being drove around the city while wearing a t-shirt around our head covering our eyes. After being in the car for an hour, feeling like I would puke at any moment from not being able to see, the said we were at our "location" and we were free to get out and get home. And he left. As our blindfolds came off Jacob took 5 seconds and said, "Awesome, I know right where we are. We are REAL far away, but this is easy, lets go!"

They can try and trick team Bolivia, but must realize, you have to try and drop us somewhere other than 3o feet from a bus stop WITH a map on the sign...

day six

Mennonite Mission Network was very well represented today in our house, as 3 people (other than our leaders) came to finally meet the people that they have been emailing with. We had continuous meetings today from 10 AM until about 3 PM about how to openly communicate with each other as a complete group. While quite boring, it was good to have an open time with everyone on a neutral level about group living.

In the afternoon, they gave us advice on how to write a blog that keeps people interested. I think I might start that tomorrow, as I would rather just write tonight what I had planned. When free time finally started, after supper, as a group we decided to go downtown and see Paramount Pictures filming their new hit, Transformers 3. We saw a few famous people, as well as a few awesome cars! I have never seen any of these movies, so it was like seeing a random person in a sweet car in Chicago. No big deal.

We also took time to go back to a favorite spot of the group, the bean, and take a few night photos of what people experience with this awesome place down town. This particular picture was taken by JD Nafziger, one of the group members going to Bolivia with me.