A Beautiful Rollercoaster

Hey everyone!

It’s getting to the point now where we are settling into a routine. We’re getting to know the city and have established our favorite coffee spots (although we will be exploring more don’t you worry). I’m also starting to get to know my students as they become less and less shy. I have my own class now and I’m learning how to be a teacher by trial and error! Hangman has been a go-to activity. We play a lot of hangman. Hangman is an almost everyday event. But class has been so fun and I’m so excited to get to know my students more as they slowly climb out of their shells. (And if you have any teaching advice for me please feel free to drop it in the comments!)

There is another crew of children who I have also had the pleasure of getting to know. These are the street kids. I’m not quite sure where they come from, and they are quite a handful, but as I get to know them more and more I am quickly becoming attached. Most nights they come to the campus where we live and we play with them under the lights on the soccer field. I am trying my best to learn their names. And they have recently learned ours. They’re very proud of this accomplishment and now say my name whenever they see me. They do pronounce it sop-e-a, but I’ve given up trying to fix it. Now everytime we walk to get coffee or go to seven eleven, we have kids following us or running up to us just excited to see us. Now playing with these children isn’t an official part of our ministry here, but to me, it’s one of my favorite parts of ministry. I feel like I am really connecting with the community through these kids. And I’m so happy to have the opportunity to pour into them. Please keep this crew in your prayers, specifically that we might see them in our classroom at some point.

One of the neighborhood girls gave me a chicken wing hair clip which really added to the already chaotic weekend. Let me fill you in. So our weekend really started on Friday which was wedding day here on campus. Pastor Kim’s son was getting married and we were invited! We each picked out one of Rebecca’s dresses to wear (Rebecca is Pastor Kim’s daughter who is our friend and helps translate for us). We even wore makeup and almost got to the point of looking fully presentable; however instead of heels, we were rocking the Birkenstocks and Chacos. It was quite a look. But from the ankle up the pictures look great. The wedding itself was so fun. Pastor Kim told us to perform a dance, so we got up there and did the cotton eye joe, the church clap, and the Macarena. The whole day felt like a fever dream. It’s hard to believe that Saturday felt even more unreal.

Saturday was Lydia’s, one of my teammates, birthday. After a breakfast of birthday cake, we spent the morning trying to find a camera (no camera found, but we did find a new boba place! so all things considered, I think it was still a successful morning). In the afternoon a few of us decided to go and watch the church league soccer tournament. The soccer field here was not big enough I guess because we had to drive to a bigger one where the tournament was held. On our way back, Pastor Kim said that “the governor is coming”. We thought we misunderstood because of the language barrier. But sure enough we pulled in and it was go time setting up the campus to host 80 people for dinner. The event was the award ceremony for the battle of the church’s soccer tournament. The governor did indeed pull up. Yet again we were asked to perform a dance. My team decided on footloose. Do I know the dance to footloose? No. Did I get up on the stage anyway? You bet I did! We thought that was the end of our time on stage. We were wrong. We were ushered back up on stage for everyone to sing happy birthday to Lydia. Then Pastor Kim started praying over her in Khamer. And I kid you not, rave music starts playing in the speakers. It was kind of like when the person on keys plays behind the pastor’s prayer at church. Except it was very loud and not at all like the keys. At the same time strobe lights start flashing. And when he finishes the prayer we look up to see the governor holding out a pink heart-shaped birthday cake. We finished off that cake as fast as we could before our host came to bring us the third and final cake of the day. But by that time we had run out of plates so we all ate slices out of our hands. We call it hand cake and it actually makes it very delicious.

You never know what to expect here. Sometimes I have to sit down and process that my life is real. But it’s been such a blast. Life here is a beautiful rollercoaster and I’ve had so much fun writing about it!

Love you all so much!

Sophie 🙂