My day thus far: Got to the church this morning and Pastor Phil asked me to run to go to the store and make some copies of a paper for the church while Justine helped Rebecca out. He said that I could take his bike which was over at his house. Here are some things you need to know before I continue.

1. I haven’t ridden a bike in years
2. Pastor Phil is like 3 feet taller than I am. His bike is big
3. The roads are mud from the storm last night

I had to get to the side of the road where it’s elevated a little just to get my leg over the bar, and quickly found out that if I sat down my legs couldn’t reach the pedals ha ha. But I finally got going and only went a few feet before the pedal stopped moving and I gracefully…fell in the mud. So I picked up the bike and looked at the chain. Now I remember when I was little this would happen to my bike, but I always had my big brother right there to fix it. However, after a few tries, I finally got the chain on correctly. I was pretty proud of myself until I realized that now I was covered in mud and I still hadn’t left the front of the McKay’s house. So I got going trying to avoid the giant puddles and the worst of the mud then started heading down the street to the main road. It slopes a little bit so I started going fast. This is when I found out that Pastor Phil’s brakes aren’t the greatest. Thankfully I was able to slow down enough to take the turn I needed. There were a couple times that I almost crashed considering I was trying to stay out of the road since the cars don’t seem too worried about pedestrians and there’s not a lot of room on the side and it’s all mud and I accidentally hit this cement thingy. But I made it to the store alive! And it was closed.

The way back was a little smoother except I almost hit a puppy… ok yeah I know that sounds horrible but at the time I had 3 options- 1. Go towards the puppy and hope it moves in time 2. Veer into a ditch 3. Hit a truck head on. Thankfully the puppy moved ha ha.

So that was within the first few hours of the day. Justine and I went grocery shopping with Rebecca then stopped by the copy shop now that it was open. So I just ran in real quick and asked for 20 copies. 20 is vente. I didn’t say vente, I said venti as if I was ordering a large coffee at Starbucks ha ha. I know I’m not that great at Spanish, but that’s pretty pathetic.
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Justine and I were walking down the road and someone yelled, “hola!” from one of the houses, but we couldn’t tell who. So we kept walking and then I heard, “Meekaehla!” and Daniel waving frantically. Totally made my day! I have never liked being called Michaela for some reason, but I like it when the kids say it. Gustavo came to Las Manos del Alfarero for the first time since I’ve been here and he would keep looking at me and say my name, “Meekaehla” over and over. So I just responded, “Gustavo.” :) While Matt was teaching that afternoon it was hard to keep a straight face and be stern with Gustavo because he kept saying, “Thank you! Thank you very much! I love you! I love you!” It was sooo funny!