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jips7
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Name: jodi
Location: Visalia, California, United States
Birthday: 3/22/1985
Gender: Female
Interests: singing at the top of my lungs, aprendiendo el español, playing the drums, eating, catching up with friends, sleeping
Expertise: i´m the world´s greatest expert on being me
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
1/26/2005
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| update your bookmarks: the housewards are moving! after many battles uploading photos to xanga, we've decided to move to a blogspot page. our new address is:
thehousewards.blogspot.com (creative, we know.)
we've already posted about the mystery trip and will soon update you on our latest possum hunt. see you over there! | | |
| I was lucky enough to talk with Jodi today via skype, and it was really nice to talk with her "face to face"! Here are a few highlights from our conversation:
In addition to the 15 students from CVC that she is there with, there are an additional 20 or so college aged students from Sonoma with the same Students International group. 2 of these students are staying with Jodi and her host family (plus one CVC student). She has 4 host brothers from ages 4-14, and she works one of the family members at her work site.
It sounds like there are 8 different work sites, and hers is the art school, so for the first few days she taught some art projects to the younger kids. She taught them how to make a paper snowflake, color with a crayon then paint over it to make an underwater scene, and something involving with popsicle sticks and yarn. After those projects, their group started painting murals at a church, where they have been spending most of their time. They are making 2 murals of Heaven scenes, hopefully we'll have some pictures when she gets back. She said that when they're done with those they will start making canvases (like building the frames and stretching the canvas over them), and maybe paint them and take them home. As you'll see later, jodi has already started painting some canvases for our living room here.
She gave me the rundown of her typical daily routine, but I don't quite remember the details. It started with a group devotions and some quiet reading time to reflect on the devotions, then I don't remember the rest. Going to their worksites was involved, and there were testimonial times in the evenings and they usually get dinner at a cafe in town where a local family makes the meals.
She has been enjoying spending time with her host family, and speaking the language with them as well. A welcome change from level 1 Spanish. It sounds like they won't be needed as much to help with the relief effort since there seems to be an abundance of aid, so they will be able to spend more time of their work sites. You can check the teams blog for more info at http://branderhorst.wordpress.com
As promised, here are the paintings for our living room. She has finished 7 of them. Eventually there will be a 4x4 grid of these above our TV. You can see them in the last post (hide and seek returns!)
And here are some of the projects around here that had been keeping jodi busy before she was in Guatemala:
Flowers in the front of our house. After these started dying, I said, "Oh well, they'll be back next year". I was wrong. Apparently "Annuals" means "doesn't live very long" instead of "blooms annually". What a dumb name.
Puzzles. I don't really enjoy them, so she gets them all to herself.
Plates. Jodi made these two plates for our moms for mother's day. If they look tedious, it's because they are.
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| well, since jodi is gone, it's time for another post from ben. We promised pictures from our wine and cheese party, so here they are:
The charms for the wine glasses (wouldn't want to accidentally drink from someone else's glass, right?)
We had taste preference sheets for people to fill out to compare the various wines and cheeses, but our mac doesn't know how to open publisher files, and I can't take a picture of them to post since jodi has out camera, so I won't be able to share it with you, but here are people filling them out:
we had stations of paired wines and cheese that people could visit and fill out their cards with how they liked the pair:
It was even nice enough that we had a station outside:
complete with centerpiece:
I even strung christmas lights on the rafters of our front porch to light up the outside station, but xanga won't let me upload that photo, so you'll have to use your imagination.
here are some pictures of our friends at the party:
the hosts:
Even though I don't like wine, I do really enjoy cheese and our friends, so I had a good time. We will hopefully do a better job of making it an annual event (it was about 18 months between the 2 "annual" parties").
In other news, I got to talk with jodi today for about 2 minutes, which was good. we didn't really make the most economical use of the short amount of time left on the phone she got from ben & kristen, but it sounds like she is doing well and enjoying her time there.
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| several weeks ago (yes, we're now only weeks behind on our posts instead of months!) we decided to have a fondue night with john and alecia. ben had given me a fondue pot for my birthday and we wanted to try it out.
our first course was a cheese fondue which we served with bread, cooked broccoli and cauliflower, and ham. sorry, no pictures.
for dessert, we had chocolate fondue with fruit, angel food cake, and marshmallows.
strawberries, bananas, and pineapple for dipping
making the chocolate sauce
many hands make light work
yum! thanks for the gift, ben!
next post: our wine and cheese party!
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