Celebrating Friendship and Good Times....and a Dozen Puppies?!

Week Number 7 has come to an end, and I have one more week left! I can't believe how fast the time is coming to an end. I am ready to come home, but I am going to miss it here too, my other home. I feel comfortable here, and I feel at home here....except for that Mark is way too far away! Here is what the last week has looked like:

*ALONE WITH PUPPIES: On Tuesday, my other Short-Term partner Laurel left to go back to the states. Karen took her to Asuncion, so I was home alone for a few days. While I was here alone, Shera (the dog that lives here) started to give birth to her puppies. I was sitting quietly in the living room almost ready to go to bed when I heard little squeaks coming from the other room. When I opened the door, I saw Shera and 2 puppies. I stayed in the room for awhile and watched her give birth to 3 other puppies before I went to bed. When I woke up in the morning....there were TWELVE puppies!!!!

*TEACHING AND TUTORING: This week the teacher I help started using some of my ideas for managing the class and teaching. She is doing a lot better and the kids are starting to respect her more. I even made a little booklet of teaching ideas for her so that she can continue to use the ideas after I leave. I hope that I made her job a little easier, since  trying to teach a crazy class is very tiring and frustrating! I also hope that some of the skills I passed on to her will help the kids pick up some more English. This week I only tutored 2 students, but both are doing a good job. The youngest one is able to have simple conversations with me in English now.

*NO INTERNET: The most frustrating thing about this week was that we had no internet until Friday. Karen never received the bill, so she never paid it. Since she never paid it, they cut the line. When she went down to pay the bill, they said they would get it up and running in 24 hours. It didn't come back in 24 hours. Or 48 hrs. Or 72 hrs. Eventually the internet company came by to check on it only to discover that when it wasn't working, Karen had unplugged it to try to get it to work again and had plugged it into the wrong spot on the wall.....so we thought it was the culture being frustrating, but it was really just user error!

*FAMILY NIGHT: Friday night at the school, it was a special night for families. All the different grades had t-shirts representing their grade, along with some of their parents. They paraded around and had friend competitions. They also sold food to earn money for each class at the school. It was fun to experience, and see some of the families* of my students. Karen called it "organized chaos". Most of the time, we had no idea what was going on, but enjoyed it anyway. Oh Paraguay...

*DIA DE AMISTAD: Here in Paraguay, they celebrate 'Friendship Day' on July 30. However, the whole week has been filled with celebrations of friendship. On the actual day, some of my students gave me candy. That night, a family invited Karen and I to join them for pizza (right after we had finished dinner at the "American time"!) It was a lot of fun to spend time with these friends and get to know them a little better. We also delivered ice cream to a family. At youth group, the lesson was on friendship, and we sang about God's friendship and ate cake and passed out presents to "secret friends". At church this morning, the message was also about friendship, and we had a lunch together to celebrate.

PRAYER REQUESTS:
*That I will h ave energy for my last week. I have many things to do this next week, on top of saying goodbye to many new friends.
*That I will be able to sleep. The last few nights I have had trouble sleeping =(.
*That I will listen to God for anytime I need to share with people in the last moments with them