DIA LINDO

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Second week of camps is over, and I am fully aware of the lack of blog for almost a wee while now. I refuse to make excuses for myself, but I am sure that other people would make them for me, these last couple of weeks have been something else completely! I hope you believe me when I say that I started writing this blog several times before giving up because I was just too exhausted to write anything worth the reading. I am afraid that today is no exception to this overall state of mind, so if this blog is eventually published, you must know that it is the result of the grace of God.

So two weeks of camps down, and two more to go. As you can imagine, there has not been a whole lot of sleep involved on these camps, and that is the number one topic of conversation most days at the moment, comparing how much sleep we get and trying to deal with symptoms of the lack of sleep, which mostly seem to be that people find each other rather hysterical. In the funny sense. I don't think I've ever laughed as much as I've laughed at the most inane slap stick comedy the past couple of nights, none of which I can repeat here, mainly because it's not very funny... and it's a kind of 'had to be there' sort of thing.

So, camps. Well, for those of you who think that hanging out with children or teenagers 24/7 for two weeks is possibly the worst thing in the world, just to let you know, you are probably right, you have to be unhinged to have loved the past two weeks, 2-3 hours of sleep nightly, running in the mud, screaming, table banging, chanting, competitiveness that is out of the world, and that's just the Brazilian leaders, you should have seen the kids. Now using this 'logic' for me to have been the happiest that I've ever been during these two weeks, would have to make me unhinged, right? So I think I am unhinged, but I like it this way. :) The first week of camps was with the age group of 8-11 year olds, about 70 of them. Mostly boys, I think that we had under 20 girls, or maybe just over, and a good 50 boys. So the week was rather animated. Unfortunately we were hit with quite a lot of rain that week as well, so some of the games that we had planned, had to be done, either in the rain, or substituted for sketches. I am not 100% the kids enjoyed the sketches, because I was too busy trying to stop myself peeing in my pants while acting the sketches. The games that we played seem to always involve mud, even when we were playing them inside as far from the mud as possible. But it seems to have crept in everywhere. Unfortunately this includes handprints on the walls inside the project which had been newly painted. Oh well. No one has got too sick from it, or infections. At least not too serious. The first week seems like an age ago now, and I can't remember all of the highlights but one would have to be the game on the first night, when the kids had to run around the seminary in the dark avoiding the 'guards' to get the flag of their country from one side to the other, seems simple, but was impossible, was a good start to the camps, both the workers and the kids loved it. Done and Done. Low light, (do you call it that?) was cleaning up poo in the showers. I say lowlight, but I didn't actually have to do that, so really It was fine ;)

Second week is much more fresh in my mind, and so I would have much more to say about it, or so you would think. There were a lot of the same games, just at a much more difficult level, also, the teenagers seemed to actually feel the tiredness, unlike the kids the week before. The kids the week before would quite happily go to sleep at 3am and then wake up at 5.30 energized and full of go. The teenagers kept the same hours, but were more moody after little sleep, more hysterical, and goodness, I don't think I've ever seen quite as many dramaqueens in one place before. We had several problems during the second week that we didn't encounter in the first week. Firstly, who knew that teenagers like to eat. A LOT, all the time. Seriously. Budget blown. Secondly, they also like to take a lot of showers, and they spend a lot of time in the showers. Not just the standard 3 a day that people usually have here, which, once you get here makes a lot of sense, but these guys showered a good 5 times a day. They had showers in between football games and everything! Oh well. That led to two days of water shortages (throughout the country I suspect - if you were in Brazil without water on thursday and friday, you can blame us for that!), also they got rather involved in the games, so much so in fact that one of them fell over and broke his finger in a serious way (like sticky out bone sort of serious) and he was still sat at the hospital, waiting to be seen, rocking back and forth, asking whether his team had won or not (they hadn't). Dedication. The highlight of this week was that the teenagers really came together on the last day, having really bonded and were just clutching each other crying. In Brasil, people are much more open about their emotions, here it is ok for one guy to send a message to his friends saying out important they are to them, and how much they love them. And cry when they are happy, or when they are sad. And to begin with it is rather amusing, but when you think about it, it is in fact rather endearing...

It has taken me so long to write this silly little bitty, because of everything else I was doing at the same time, and I can't even check it over or write the other things that I wanted too, sorry.

But our time has been amazing, our step team has been amazing. I am still the happiest I have ever been, being here. But now, there are boys arriving expecting to be entertained and I shouldn't let them down.

Much Love

God Bless you as He has me.

Emma