a little bit about myself

i've been learning a lot about myself lately, specifically when it comes to writing.
i have discovered that i have a VERY hard time writing something "assigned" or with a deadline if i have things going on in my personal life that i haven't released verbally or on paper. sometimes even if i've talked or vented about it, i still need to write it out and just let it go. i'm a very emotional person and my emotions get in the way easily.
i was recently trying to write an article for the children's newsletter at church but i couldn't focus on it or get inspiration to write it. it was about kids alive, which is now on my mind about 75% of the time (that percentage is rapidly rising!). i have known about the article for a week or two, but the deadline snuck up on me and so i found myself trying to force my mind into thinking about it and what i needed say instead of just letting it flow out. something that should have taken me 30 mins to write ended up taking me several days of jotting down thoughts/ideas and then about an hour to put them together and transition them. and i'm still not happy with it. it's now printed, but i'm not content about it.
i think i've put my finger on why it was so hard. every time i would go to work on the article (even a week in advance), my mind would want to write about the current "big deals" in my life and it wouldn't let me focus on what i told it to focus on. i would write one terrible sentence about kids alive and then either lose complete control of the pen and start word vomiting on paper or just stop writing altogether. it was really annoying and just made me mad to the point that i just blocked out the article until literally the very last minute.
i don't know why i didn't just let myself journal and write what i wanted/needed to (i think i told myself i didn't have time? or that it wasn't important or something. dumb.). things would have been so much less stressful if i would have just taken care of things in order. i see that now and will hopefully be able to take care of problems like this quicker in the future.


*this is the reason for so much time between my blog posts. if the things on my mind are too personal to post on here and i don't choose to just write or talk them out, i don't write for weeks at a time.

matrimonia

the best way to answer the question, "what was your favorite part of your trip?" is to say, "oh, you know, the part where i got married..." [it gets better after that, depending on how well i know the person ;)] i've gotten some fun looks and some majorly confused people :)
so here's what happened. first of all, i blame everything on bailee and louis. and maybe [s]ack (he was in on some of the translation but i really can't blame him for anything).
anyway...it was the second day on the job site and there were several of us standing around talking to the kids and just having a good time. we were teaching each other words and stuff. it was honestly one of my favorite parts of the trip. so after maybe five minutes of this, 2 guys started walking over and tried to talk to us. of course, our spanish knowledge is minimal and their english knowledge is nonexistent, so it was very broken and confusing. we found out that their names were olman and louis. louis was trying to communicate the idea that olman liked me. bailee, being the only one of the two of us actually talking, decided that this was a good time to marry me off. thanks friend :)
so this is the part where i say "si." louis asked if i liked olman. now...it is pretty much impossible to explain in spanish the difference between liking someone as a friend/just liking them as a person in general and actually "liking" them. so all i really could say was yes. well apparently i should have said "no." louis then brought up the idea of "matrimonia" (for any nit-wits out there, that means MARRIAGE!!). and again, my lovely friend who apparently wants me to move away, have nine children and live in honduras for the rest of my life starts encouraging the idea of matrimonia! louis wanted to have the wedding that afternoon. bailee suggested tomorrow. again, thanks friend. you really saved my skin on that one! *note the sarcasm.
here's a picture of the little conversation...olman is in the hat and louis is hiding behind micah, trying to scheme with bailee. (*notice the smile on my face that says, "i'm going to kill you!" not, "thank you. this is fun...")


so that was pretty much the end of the conversation. we left it at "wedding tomorrow". to be honest though, i was worried and felt pretty bad about it all because that isn't extremely abnormal for their culture. i was a little bit scared that he would come the next day expecting something...thankfully he didn't. (BUT, i did have to explain to his parents at the end of the trip why i wasn't going to marry him. that was just awkward. i felt horrible.)
i obviously didn't get married on the trip, but i think i came just about as close as you can. i even picked who was going to be in the wedding and we had a bit of a bachelorette party in our hotel room/by the pool that night. [thank you Lord for this day!]
word spread about the marriage and i would see kids pointing and laughing or the kitchen ladies smiling at me whenever i turned around. it was pretty funny. my favorite lady "sign language" brought it up every day and would point at him then me and give me a hug :) she was great.


okay, that's all i got for this story. have fun with the comments :)