Spring Breaks(the bad kind)

so it seems that spring brings many things in my life. in ohio its always meant the end of winter and the beginning(usually) of warmer weather after 5 months of cold and gray. it means colorful foliage, blue skies, all these good things. but more often than not it also means that i will sustain some kind of ridiculous injury which has been the custom the last...4 or 5 years as far as i can remember. and this year proved to be no different.
since being here in Venezuela Ive successfully managed to avoid any kind of serious injury. even after taking up soccer for the first time in my life, and adjusting to the ridiculously slippery basketball courts. i've been fine. until 2 weeks ago at the National Conference. we were playing soccer in a small field, we had just won our first match and were on our way to winning the second when one of the students boots the ball way over the net into never never land. being the closest one to the ball i decide to take off after it and unfortunately, to my surprise, i found of the holes in the lawn where the sprinkler system is. bam. in a split second i was done. this pretty much sums it up...

my right foot managed to hit half of the hole which caused me with my full weight to roll my ankle all the way into the hole, thankfully avoiding the sprinkler head.
long story short, after a few days of having my foot in a bucket of ice i was walking around for the next week like a gimp, and my foot was about 1 and a half times the size of the other. and after not seeing any improvement in the week i finally came to my senses and decided to go see the doctor. after and X-ray and a quick look, the doctor told me that i had a small distal fracture of my tibia and had partially torn two ligaments in my ankle. awesome. in my 23 years of life ive never broken anything besides my nose. the doc did say that i was lucky and about 1/10 of an inch away from needing surgery to fix everything, which would have meant going back to the US and getting all of that done. i should have listened to Kobe
so yeah. i love spring, minus the large holes in the ground. unfortunately this is hindering me form really doing my job and getting on campus every day since im not supposed to walk, and the boot that i have is just uncomfortable, especially because its so dang hot here. on the brighter side, it has given me a lot of time to read some good stuff, listen to alot of good stuff.
but im counting down the days/weeks(2 weeks and 3 more days!!!) until i dont need the boot anymore and i can resume life as normal. a month is a long time.

Beware the Mustaches of March!

So march. alot of significant things happened in march. We made decisions about what we are doing next year, Congresso!!!(which gets its own blog post, i grew my first mustache which was totally awesome, LOTS of team birthdays(Lucas, Luke, David). So yeah, it was another eventful month.

So for the first few days we were in Curacao. But shortly after we returned it was time to make our final decisions about what we would be doing next year( like returning[or not] to STINT, applying for full time staff, etc..). I felt the Lord was calling me to go back to the States and continue my education.It was honestly a tough decision. It took up alot of my thoughts, time and prayers. This place has found a very special place. As much as i get frustrated with the on and off water and electricity, you just get used to those kinds of things. Things like that which were once a "big deal" become a part of life, at the most an inconvenience maybe when you cant shower or do dishes when you might want to. But there are alot of things here that make up for the periodic loss of water or other utilities. Actually, when we first got back form Curacao I probably hit my most frustrating point. The day after we came back we did not have water, electricity or gas, which was a bit frustrating not to have all three at once, but like i said, you just get used to it.
But anyway. So yeah, the people here are for sure worth not having water once in awhile. The students and my team are some amazing people who i appreciate and love. That will the hardest part to leave this summer, but luckily i still have a few more months to squeeze as much as i can out of them.

Other than that the rest of March was preparing for Congreso(Vida Estudiantils national conference for Venezuela). I did not have a ton of work to do for the conference before hand other than getting our students there, which at times felt like the most frustrating part. To put it nicely, its hard to get the majority of people here to commit to things, especially a month or weeks in advance. Needless to say when you are trying to plan for a conference where you are expecting nearly 300 people, it can be a tad stressful. But it all worked out in the end(more to come later on Congreso itself).

As i mentioned earlier, there were several birthdays on our team and we had a great time celebrating them! We had a little dance party for Lucas, went out to ice cream for Luke's birthday and just had a fun night as a team for David's which we also ate ice cream at. Getting the ice cream was an interesting experience.
So before we head over to the girls for dinner, Oscar and I went to a small store to pick up some choclate ice cream to suprise David with(it's his favorite). At the store we went to, the chest where the ice cream is held is right in the entrance to the store and is locked and you need a worker to come open it for you. Not a problem. We get there, grab the attention of one of the workers and ask him to open it. While he is there with us we spot a box of chocolate ice cream. We then debated for a moment on whether we should get a another container of ice cream because the one was a little small for 7 people. In the 1 minute that we are talking about it, some lady, who for sure didn't need the ice cream, she was hefty (sorry if that's mean, but she made me mad...and it's the truth...i was also a nutrition major, sorry.) comes over and points at the box that the worker is currently holding. Instead of giving her another one, he hands her that one. Not a problem, right? no. of course that was the last chocolate one there. ridiculous. needless to say i wanted to go find that lady and take back that ice cream for a number of reasons. The foremost being that it was David's favorite.
Thankfully we just took our business next door and happen to find the last chocolate container they had in stock. Crisis averted.

Quickly about Curacao.

So at the end of February and the start of March we were blessed to be able to take our visa renewal on the awesome little island of Curacao. Let me tell you, it is unjustly overshadowed by it's neighbor, Aruba. While Aruba was beautiful, Curacao matched that beauty and then some. It was also without nearly as many touristy, run-of-the-mill attractions.
Our trip was a blast. We took a tiny little plane(smallest plane ive evern been on. it had propellers...) form Valencia to Wilemstead, then drove across the island to our fun little house that we were staying at. The couple that owned the place were so help and fun, and their restaurant was delicious as well www.curacaosunshine.com/pages/sol_food.htm check it out.

The island was fun. The language was quite fun to listen to as well. Popiomentu, or something like that. Its a strange mix of Spanish, Dutch, and English...go figure.
One of the first things we found out about the island, we were continually reminded of throughout the week, was that the island is full of goats. lots of them. and they often like to cross the street when it's very busy. Our first meal on the island was Pizza Hut, which didnt have a salad bar, but still provided a little taste of home.
But yeah, it was a blast. we spent a lot of time snorkeling, exploring the island, and watching the sun sets from our apartment. We also got to experience alittle bit of home and cheer on our country watching some of the winter olympics. It was a blessing to be able to relax and enjoy a fun 5 days with my team mates in such a beautiful place. I could probably talk more, but i think i'll just post a few pictures.
Unfortunately i do not have pictures of the awesome fish that we saw. they were really cool.
One of the coolest parts of the week was meeting David and Sunshine, they were such kind and helpful people. They were also from the US, and now living on the island. It was so fun to watch them interact with the local kids too. David had a ton of fun goofing around with them. He also had started a mountain biking club for the kids in the neighborhood which was just really cool. His eventual hope s to find tutors to help the kids with their academics so that they can go on to bigger and better things. Very cool.

While we were in West Punt most of the time, the last night we stayed in Willemstead. It was a great town. Beautiful, clean and colorful. It also had a floating bridge that moved which was neat.

Unfortunately my week ended in frustration. Before turning in the rental car i had to go fill it with gas. With out question i dont ever recall being that frustrated with anything in my entire life. The gas stations were pretty far from the airport, i didnt have cash, and none of the gas stations accepted Visa. So eventually I had to bite the bullet and just turn it in without filling it up and incur the ridiculous cost. but it's all good, i still had a blast that week and was good and ready for the coming month of craziness leading up to Congreso.

Memories from Feburary...

so its been three months and i have in fact only gotten worse at updating this, but for good reason. we are busy man. seriously. and at the end of the day im tired. it's much easier to want to read blogs then sit and think about what i want to write. but over the next few im going to recount some of the events of the past few months as best as i can.

so in this one ill start way back in Feb...lets see what my noggin can recall....

February...


So February was a fun month overall.
It started with the arrival of our final roommate, Oscar, and a visit form the badenhops(see picture above).
There are afew of my favorite memories from first few weeks of the month
The first happened after Aaron and Elizabeth had treated our team to dinner. We were standing outside of the restaurant. The name of the restaurant was The Pumpkin...i don't remember the word in spanish. but anyway, after dinner, we headed outside to get taxi's back to the girls apartment to hang out. after everyone else had left, David, Sarah, Lisa, and I were the last ones left waiting on a taxi. As we are standing out side a taxi pulls up and the security guard approaches the car before any of do. He talks to the taxi driver for a moment, then the taxi drives away. after a second of being perplexed David finally speaks with the security guard. i didn't understand what he was saying, but whatever it was it made Sarah laugh and David's eyes get a little bigger. As David came back, we asked him what happened, he and Sarah happily recanted what had happened. their translation: "He was a pirate. He was going to rob you". that's what the guard had told david. EEV..

The week after the Badenhops had gone back to the States, it was the guys turn to make dinner for the rest of our team. We get the brilliant idea to make french toast. tasty, simple, everyone can eat it. perfect.
so around 7 everyone gets to our apartment and we begin to make dinner. about 5 minutes into the venture, the lights go out. there's no turning back at this point, we were committed. hungry people at our house, food in different stages of preparation, we had to forge ahead. if my memory serves me correctly, i believe that was the first time i had ever made french toast by flashlight. it was quite a fun experience as we bounced the light back and forth between the bacon and the french toast, hoping to catch either before they had been burned to a crisp. eventually dinner was ready to be served and surely enough the lights came back just in time for us to enjoy our dinner together.

after that, everything gets a little fuzzy. we had an awesome outreach on campus about love, we saw the movie Valentines Day(which i recommend. it also reminded me that i have a huge crush on jessica beil...), and making complete fools out of ourselves in a Chinese restaurant( we had napkin races, and chopstick races and made a scene, it was fantastic!)
February concluded with our visa renewal trip to beautiful Curacao. but seriously, it was b-e-a-utiful. ive never seen water so blue, or sand so white, or fishes so colorful. Awesome. It was also a great chance to sit back and think about what i would be doing with the next year of my life, which was a decision i had been wrestling with quite a bit.but that decision wouldn't come until March. For now, more about Curacao...