Blazing Speed Walkers!

1. Last night after class,  I had to go to the fotocopiadora to make copies of a text book for a class that I'm taking. Students at UCSP do not purchase text books. Rather, the professor has one copy of the book, and all of the students go to the fotocopiadora to make copies of the book. The book that I copied last night cost S/. 2.40, which is about $0.92. That is a LOT less expensive than my text books at Calvin! I'm not sure how copywrite laws work here. Either they don't exist or they aren't enforced.

2. After making copies, I went to Club Internacional. It's kind of hard to describe what Club Internacional is. At a basic level, it's a place to go to work-out. But it is so much more than that! It's like a little city across the river from UCSP. There is a hair salon and a bunch of restaurants, a conference center, two pools, a soccer field, a track, a playground, tennis courts, dance classes, and a lot of other stuff. I didn't go in all the buildings. I ran on the track, and it was great to run again! I thought that it would be a lot harder because of the altitude, but I didn't feel any different! I haven't really done anything active since being here in Arequipa (aside from walking 4 to 8 miles a day in on very hill terrain). Calvin got passes for all of us for the Club Internacional, and I'm looking forward to going there often.

3. Sometimes I don't realize what language I'm speaking.

4. Today after class, I went to the Club Internacional again and ran on the track again. This time, though, I got lapped by the fastes speed-walker I have ever seen in my life! Either I am running very very slow, or this guy was walking like lightning. I prefer to think that he was very very fast.

5. The french fries here are fabulous! They are made out of a special potato (I'm not sure yet what is different about this special potato). And they are bright yellow!! Julita makes them quite often, and they were part of lunch today. I like them.

6. Today was the first day of Intercambio de Conversacion  (that means Conversation Exchange)! All us Calvin students were given the option to join conversation groups with San Pablo students. The groups contain two San Pablo students and one Calvin students, and we meet once a week for an hour. We talk for half and hour and Spanish and half an hour in English. I definitely wanted to be a part of this because it's an opportunity to continue to practice my Spanish and to get to know more San Pablo students. There are only 19 of us Calvin students, but 183 San Pablo students signed up for these groups!!! Unfortunately, there isn't room for all of them, but because of the high demand, Professor Zandstra asked us if we could do two groups a week. I've had quite a bit of free time between classes for the past few weeks, and I'd love to get to know more San Pablo students, so I told her I'd be willing to do two groups. Today, all of the Calvin students and San Pablo students met and we were assigned groups (we drew names from a cup). Afterwards, we had to find times that work in our schedules to meet (which wasn't very hard, actually), and then we just sat and talked for a while!!! Every week, I'm going to get to know Danery (that's a girl), David, Antonio, and Alfonso. It was really fun talking to them this afternoon for a little while! Basically we just talked about where we are from, what we're studying, what we like to do... just getting to know one another. But they were all very nice and I am looking foward to meeting with them next week!

7. After talking for a little while, Danery, David, Antonio, Alfonso, and I went out to the yard behind the university with Scott, Amy, and Sydney from Calvin, and we all played frisbee. Frisbee was something new to our new friends from San Pablo, so we taught them a bit about the best ways to throw and how the game of Ultimate Frisbee works. That was really fun!!!

8. I don't really have an eighth thing to say right now... I just wanted this list to end in a fibonacci number.

Father, right now I praise You for all that You did today. Thank You for the fun time that I had with new friends from Calvin and newer friends from San Pablo. I praise you for always being with me, for reminding me that You know what You're doing, and for being so so good, Jesus!!