Recovery

Well I must say it has been a tough thing getting back into the teaching mode. I have been so tired this week from my weekend travels with literally no sleep, but it was worth it. I got home on Monday afternoon and went right to doing homework and unpacking. I fell asleep on the couch Monday afternoon and Lautaro came over for a minute. I was so sleepy and out of it that I answered the door and spoke in english to him and then didn´t know why he couldn´t understand me. It was funny.



This week it was my turn to head over to the other center to teach, so I headed over Tuesday morning. The feel of the other center is very different. It is two stories and was built in the yard of a church building. You kinda feel like you are entering a forbidden fortress when you get to the door because they have a doorbell with a camera to see who comes in. In the center they have three girls that are doing internships as secretaries and then one missionary couple as well as the center manager a paid employee of the church. They get a lot more traffic than our center does mainly because this is more in the area where people need jobs. The center in Vitacura is in the richer part of town and people have to travel a long way to get there.



I started out Tuesday with six alumnos. Three are members and three were not. In the introductiongs, it seemed that everyone was having a hard time, and that they were all passing through difficult moments in their life. It was as if nothing more could go wrong in their lives. I saw the need for uplifting so I tried as hard as I could to be happy and positive and just help them see that they are not alone nor are they without hope. The Lord provides for those who are willing to do all they can to have success and the fact that they were there in the workshop shows that they are willing to do anything! I had one man, a member, who had a hard time with some of the techniques we teach in the workshop. He especially had a hard time with the networking concept because he said he had tried it before and it didn´t work. I tried to explain to him how it works and why it works and he just kept saying no, so finally I looked at him and said, ´It is really easy to say it doesn´t work, but this is a program developed by the church, by men who were called by prophets to do so. I know it works, I have seen it, have some faith!´ He didn´t come back wednesday...



Yesterday (wednesday) was still a really neat experience. Alex, a non member who has this rare disease that only 60 people in the whole world have came in Tuesday so down. Wednesday he was literally a different person. He was smiling, he was laughing, he was joking, it was AWESOME! I pointed that out to him and he just smiled and said, ´I know.´ Angelica, who had to quit her job because of depression issues (her husband left her) came in yesterday with three different job interviews set up! She had been really shy and sad on Tuesday, and she just blossomed over night. I think this might have been the first time that it was physically evident the difference in the workshop attendees. It was awesome.



After work I interviewed a restaraunt owner, his son and th eir head chef for a homework assignment. It was kind of cool to talk with them about their business how it came to be and how well they were doing 16 years later. The son teaches salsa lessons and invited me to go tonight, so Sarah, Nell and i are going to go. I am excited.



Sarah, Nell and I had an adventure tongith trying to find this concert in the park. We met up at an ice cream place and had some real food while watching a special on Michael Jackson. He was an amazing dancer...Then we went out looking for this park that had to be in the some neighborhood we were in but we weren`t sure wehere. We looked up directions on the internet and then hopped on some buses taht should have taken us there. When we got to one of the cross streets we were l ooking for we just started walking and then kept asking people who each pointed u s in different directions. It was really funny. I kept saying `It`s an ADVENTURE!`and we laughed quite a bit. At one point these men in a car honked at us to which I turned around, pointed and said ´Thank you!` really loud. This happened one more time. The last time it happened, all t hree of us turned around pointing and shouting, `Thank you!` at the same time, it was so funny! WE got to the park as they were taking down the concert, so we didn`t actually see it, but it was really fun! :)