I got home yesterday afternoon after being in Oaxaca, Mexico on a mission trip to help with a youth camp for indigenous children in the region. However, this is going to be short note. I've got about 20 (small) pages of notes from the week and there's no way I'm going to get through that in one sitting. I don't know how I'm going to break it apart just yet. I'm debating between themes and dates. I'll figure that out eventually.
The short summary is that it was a great trip. The three of us from Las Vegas met up with another team of three from California, and we all worked together with 4 young adults from Guadalajara to lead the camp. There were a fewer children than we had hoped because of various political issues that were faced, but the eleven children that were there had a great time. The crafts we had put together all went well, and the games and other recreational activities were successful. I think there's a lot that I learned, but it's hard to articulate those things right now. I need time to process that and really draw out the deeper truths that I observed and experienced. Other tidbits from the trip: I learned a little bit of Spanish; I went to the greatest cultural celebration in the region (Guelaguetza); and I visited the archaeological site Monte Alban.
After I got home (maybe it was about 3:30 PM), I needed to unpack the bags and do a load of laundry because I needed to be ready for work the next day and I was at the end of a clothes cycle before I left. The turnaround has been very quick, but relatively smooth. I only had about 230 emails to read, and maybe only about 40 of those required action of some sort. The rest were a mixture of junk emails, semi-junk emails (emails that aren't quite junk, but not directly relevant to me), and informational items that I simply needed to read. I've still got another dozen or so to get me "up to date" on the emails, but then there are various projects that I've now fallen behind on that I'll need to work on. So I'm going to be quite busy for a couple weeks.
Which is just long enough for me to get to the IV Faculty Conference during the first week of August...
