The End of the School Year

So since the last time you were all updated I have been keeping very busy. First of all we had Mayfair at PG Methodist. What that is exactly I have no idea. Basically you have a Maypole and you wrap ribbon around it to make it look pretty. Other than that I’m not really sure what it is all about (I may or may not be selling Mayfairs all over world incredibly short, sorry Mayfairs). I think it’s a Methodist thing, at least down here only Methodist schools have Mayfairs. Again I think. We also had a whole bunch of fundraising activities for the school during the Mayfair, such as BBQ sale, pedicures, dances, and various other games.

 The chefs. Me and these two hooligans were at school by 6 to start barbecuing for everyone.

 The Maypole

 Making the ribbon wrap around.

 Pretty?

 Getting the feet fixed up.

Next, after a hard fought regionals and then districts my girls softball team made it to nationals. In districts after a very hard fought warm-up we took out the team from the school up the road that didn’t exist because they only had like 5 girls, and then threw one pitch at regionals to move on to nationals because no teams showed up there either (the pitch was a ball, nowhere even close to the plate).  At nationals though after a very long (we left at 3 in the morning and got back at about 11:30 in the night) and rainy day we ended up getting fourth. I only have the one picture now but hopefully I will get more soon.

Classic. I think Norman in the back there is hilarious.

Otherwise the last few weeks of June were busy with finishing up with school and graduations. There isn’t much to say about graduations so I’ll just show a bunch of pictures from the many I went to this year and put some captions.

 The graduate (Steph, my host cousin back in Armenia) with my wonderful Na. It wasn't easy getting them to both smile.

 At the graduation she refused to smile. She gets home and the first thing she does is smile and run around. Kids....

 I have to put a pic of my little sister, cute as ever. I sadly missed her preschool graduation because my school back in Forest Home had graduation the same day.

 PG Methodist graduation.

 The average emcee (at PG Methodist's graduation).

The fantastic emcee (at Forest Home's graduation).

Standard 5 kids singing for the graduates.

 The graduates.

  Forest Home preschool graduation. How cute are they in their little get-ups?

Looking back at what I have written it doesn’t seem like much but I really have been busy lately. I will now leave you with some pictures and anecdotes. Firstly, we have a situation straight out of Home Alone 1 that took place on the 3^rd of June, a seemingly beautiful Sunday. After my weekly Sunday routine of going to church, eating multiple dinners with neighbors, and hanging out in the village I came home to a large tarantula on my wall above the entrance to the “kitchen.” Being the tough, fearless, well-adjusted person I am I left it on the wall because I figured it wasn’t bothering anyone and was probably just going to eat some other bugs for me. I went about my business and more or less completely forgot about the tarantula until about 7 when I decided to cook some supper. As I went to turn on my gas, which is located right outside my kitchen and brought me directly under the tarantula, I bent down and felt something large and hairy land on my head and begin attacking me brutally. Naturally, I hit the panic button. I started shaking my head to get the thing off which subsequently just made the thing fall on my arm. The next obvious step then was to start shaking my arm wildly to get it off of there, which just flung it to my shirt. Once on my shirt I was finally able to shake it off onto the ground. Of course, while I’m busy looking like a fool dancing around trying to get this dumb spider off of me my cat that is supposed to keep my house clean of all things critter and my pit bull that is supposed to be some sort of ferocious killing machine are both staring at me like I’m a complete idiot and won’t go anywhere near the thing. Once off me, I acted my normal cool as a cucumber self and put it on my shovel and carried it about 100 yards from my house and let it go free.... Honestly though, I’m sure it just accidently fell on me but it did spook me quite a bit because I totally forgot about it and it did take me like 3 tries to get the dumb thing off as the animals were looking at me like I was crazy. I will also say Maya at least redeemed herself because the next day another tarantula a little smaller than this one was on the verandah and she chased it away from the house. And as much as I hate to admit it, my house is noticeably less buggy since I got Mittons.

The culprit.

Two days later as I’m sure all of you know was my 24^th birthday. Although I didn’t do anything special like last year when I had the Mayan birthday, I still had an experience which I feel would never happen in the States. My two buddies from down here came over to hang out and I made them pizza. Seeing as it was a school day and my friends live in town they didn’t get to my house to later in the evening so we were cooking the pizza late. A little after half way through the first one wouldn’t you just figure I ran of gas. That meant the first one we just ate not completely done, and then we had to deal with the next one that was already assembled. This meant we had to go on a quest at about 9 o’clock at night (which is pretty late in the village) to find someone who was still up to bake the pizza for us. After trying various houses I just ended up waking my host mom up and having her cook it for me. Anyway, long story short it was an adventure and I had a fun birthday just eating pizza and hanging out with friends.

Next we got some pictures of the ever-growing Maya.

 They are starting to get along a little better. I've caught the cat sleeping on top of the dog like some sort of giant pillow a few times now.

 Crique Maya

She loves to go in creeks. However, she is pretty pathetic at swimming. She runs around where she can stand until she accidently jumps where she has to swim and then just panics, flailing her arms everywhere in what I can only assume is an attempt at the front crawl. I try and tell her she is a dog and therefore has to doggy paddle and keep her paws under the water and not play at being Phelps, but apparently she doesn't speak human.

Finally I’ll leave you with a real random picture that speaks for itself. The things you find in Punta Gorda.