First day of school!

For me, that is.  I've never experienced a full school-time weekday at RSM, so today was interesting.

I got up at 6:15 (ugh--I've got to go to bed earlier if I want to help Juanita in the mornings!), and it was oddly chilly and dark in my room.  Thought at first it was the early hour, until I peeked through the blinds and saw a super-thick fog outside.  Sudden weather change!  I don't think it got past 70 degrees today, though the sun did come out by mid-morning.

Janet, Mark, and (the elbow of) Johnny praying outside the dorm for the boys

Juanita and I set up cereal, cut papayas, heated Rene's leftover spinach scramble, and then chatted with Oscar in the kitchen until breakfast time (7:30 am on weekdays).  The kids all came in, wearing their school uniforms with the dark green vests, and did their meal-setup chores.  They had their backpacks ready to go.  After breakfast was finished, they went out to play for a bit while we had staff devos.  Today our prayer location was the boys' dorm.  We stood outside and prayed for the boys to come to know Christ, to feel loved, to learn how to be good leaders & hard workers, to be able to work through issues, etc., and for Mark to have wisdom on taking care of them.  Some of the kids have brought a lot of baggage with them and struggle with attitude, obedience, respect, self-worth, etc. We also prayed for one of the boys who has an abcessed tooth and needs to go to the dentist.  After that, I sat and observed the kids' morning Bible classes.  Lucas taught the older kids, and Josefina taught the younger ones.  There was no interpreter, but I still enjoyed watching and trying to guess at what the signs meant.  After that I followed the kids outside and watched them do their flag salute, and then went to my room for a couple minutes.

Juanita, Mari, and Janet hard at work (fun work, of course) making ceviche

Janet and I met Juanita in the kitchen at 9:30 to prep the lunch.  Mari, the laundry lady, came in and helped us too, since she was waiting for the laundry loads to finish.  We made ceviche from the rest of the tuna Erik had brought.  (Just in case you happen to be in the dark, ceviche is diced raw seafood--tuna in this case--marinated in lemon juice and mixed with diced onions, diced tomatoes, cilantro, and sometimes other vegetables.  The easy way to eat it is on a tostada, which is how Juanita served it.) This was my first time having ceviche--I've never had occasion to try it until now--and it was delicious!  Initially the idea of both me and Janet helping Juanita at the same time wasn't to help her get it done (Juanita used to be a restaurant cook and is super-duper efficient) but so that we could both practice our Spanish.  I sort of felt bad, because without meaning to I leaped in and just started conversing as well as I could with Juanita and Mari, and I think I kinda left Janet in the dust because she's not as far along in her Spanish skills.  At some point she left to do office work, and I felt like I'd crashed her Spanish lesson.  I told her later that if she preferred, I could help Juanita with breakfast and then Janet could help with lunch.  That way I'm not there to monopolize the conversation . . . obviously I talk too much, even en español!

Hmmm . . . this room is gonna take a while.

After Juanita and I had finished the lunch prep and Mari had returned to the laundry, I went to find Janet and, after apologizing for crashing her Spanish lesson (she wasn't upset, thankfully), had her help me get going on the linen-room organization project she wanted me to do.  The distribution center, where they take all the non-food donations that come in, is categorized into different rooms--clothes, school supplies, Bible stuff, recreational equipment, etc.  The linen room is piled high with towels, sheets, comforters, blankets, curtains, and a bunch of other fabric items, and Janet has been wanting to clear some stuff out of it.  She said that certain things (such as pillowcases) get donated so often that they can never be used, and end up occupying space.  So my assignment for the next week or so is to organize the room a little at a time.  I did the sleeping bags before lunch and the towels after lunch.  Sort of lonely in there, but I got my iPod and put on some worship music, which helped.  Howard and Janet told me I don't have to work every hour of the day, and that part of Ranch life is to learn to relax a little bit.  But at least for now, I still feel like keeping busy.  It's really quiet now that there are no groups here, and there are so few students and staff compared to how it was five years ago, so I guess I was trying to ward off loneliness or boredom by being as helpful as possible.  I like helping out, so I was okay with doing an assigned task.  After I finished the towels, I went to the kitchen and made another school snack: strawberry yogurt pops with mandarin oranges.  (Very Mexican, if I do say so myself.  For the record, I didn't use a recipe--I made it up as I went.)

Johnny and Amber cooked and served the dinner.  Juanita had it all prepped to go--leftover rice from lunch, with stewed chicken legs and vegetables (yay veggies!).  After dinner the kids went out to play on the playground.  They're allowed an hour after dinner for playtime/hangout time.  Axel and Karen, who are 16 and 15 years old, go to a higher-level school in Ensenada and have to take the bus there and back each day.  They arrived around 7 and came into the kitchen, backpacks still on, and immediately raided the kitchen for leftovers.  Janet and I got out some leftover chicken, rice, and ceviche for them, and they loaded their plates and sat down, never even taking their backpacks off the whole time they ate.  Totally reminded me of our house over the past five years--late night fridge raids happening constantly.  Ah, student life.

Finished the night off with a twilight walk (lit by flashlight) around the 1-mile loop road.  It goes basically from the staff house to the northeast end of the property, loops around to the front of the property to parallel the road, and then turns and loops back again by the bunkhouse to finish near the MTC.  It was nice, though if not for the moon I would have been in pitch black.  Maybe I'll take that walk a couple minutes earlier next time.  Thankfully didn't see any tarantulas!

Speaking of critters, Ricardo (a longtime student; he's 15 now) and Leonardo (a new student who just got here this weekend) found a 3-inch scorpion in the dining hall while they were sweeping.  Amber took it outside and we killed it (shoes are good for that).  She told me about some of the other creepy bugs they have here, like tarantula wasps.  (I won't go into detail about those.  If you want to find out about a nasty bug life cycle, you can look it up yourself.)  It was neat to chat with Amber this afternoon.  We had a couple of good conversations in the kitchen about where life currently has us and where we're hoping to go next.  I've known Amber now for quite a while, so it's always nice to talk and catch up.  She and I were both art majors--I graduated from CSU Long Beach and she graduated from CSU Northridge--so we had that in common right off the bat.  I still think of her as my art compadre at Rancho.  A little about her and Johnny: They've served here for a number of years, and they have two kids with another on the way.  Juan José, or JJ, is 9 this year.  He's deaf and came here as a student--they decided to adopt him a few years ago and are his legal guardians, but are still trying to get through all the adoption processes.  Evalynn, their born daughter, is 3 now (I think).  They don't know yet whether the new baby will be a boy or girl.

Anyway, it's almost 9:30 and I'm trying to be a good girl tonight with my bedtime.  So I'll stop rambling.  Maybe once Rancho mentality finally sets in I'll quit yapping so much and write shorter posts . . .