Crazy Weeks

The past 1.5 weeks have been... just crazy. I've been flabbergasted, annoyed, tired like crazy, happy, sad... and on Sunday I slept till 10.30am! The first time since I got here that I slept that long. I got used to getting up at 5am or 6am at the latest every day - and I actually don't dislike it. Well, it's impossible to put everything into one blog though and the coming weeks won't be less intensive, I guess, since I'll go on a road trip all the way to Brazil with my two friends Arturo and Nailson on Wednesday or Thursday, visiting the orphanage in Rurrenabaque (I went on mission trips there with Miracle Meadows School 2006 and 2007), stopping at the school in Guayaramerin and not to forget the "Death Road" from La Paz down into the humid and hot Beni region. Well, I already survived it in 2006 and I'm hoping, we'll get a bus with good brakes... I'll let you know though which night we'll do this part of the trip (so you can pray for us), but it'll be either Thursday night or Saturday night. I'm planning on spending some days in Brazil and then going to the other orphanage to do some garden work-out or whatever they'll find to do for me. For my last week in Bolivia, I'll come back to the university and on August 14th, I'll be on German ground again. Back to reality. Back to work.

You still want to know what happened in the past 1.5 weeks? Well, I fear, I won't have the time to write about it a lot - but it started with Tara and Ruan (directors of the school in Guayaramerin) showing up on Friday, went on with my dear friend David (from the States) tapping on my shoulders on Monday morning when I was waiting in the line to get into the cafeteria ("DAAAAAAAVID!!! What the heck are YOU doing here?") and kind of ended with my laptop breaking down yesterday. I called my brother today, but we couldn't fix the problem this time. It needs some "special treatment" and since I don't want to lose my stuff and I don't really trust people I don't know and who don't understand German (everything on my laptop is in Geman), I decided to leave my laptop with "my family" here and wait until my brother can have a closer look at it. He studied that stuff and I'm really happy to have a computer specialist in the family since I don't have a CLUE how these machines work. Maybe it's even better to leave my laptop here and not to take it on the trip. Might be saver...

The only problem I'll have without laptop: I can't promise anything concerning blogs anymore. I mean I left you without a message for quite a while and I hope I won't do that again, but the computer I'm using right now, for example, doesn't allow me to upload pics and I don't know how to get my pictures from my SD-card to my pen-drive anyways, especially at the orphanage without Nailson's laptop. Whatever. I'll do my best and I hope I can upload a pic for this blog tomorrow and tell you a bit more about my eventful past days =) One is for sure though: I can use your prayers!! Not just for the trip, but in general. There is a lot of stuff going on around and in me at the moment. I haven't felt the need for prayer as bad as I'm doing right now in my whole past 4.5 months here! I don't see it as a bad thing though. I feel closer to God than before, too!

I wish all of you a great day or a good night =)
I hopefully will be back tomorrow,
maria

PS (one day later): One of the many pictures that caracterize these crazy days... David behind me on the left, next to him Ruan and in the middle his wife Tara. Sitting on the left: a former student of Tara and Ruan. Was an interesting day. I ran around Cochabamba with David to find parts for a van he was repairing in Santa Cruz. Felt like old times =) Monday night, all 4 of them took the bus back to Santa Cruz.