today i am ... disciplined.

it's amazing the amount of stuff i can do in a day now. stamina is improving, competency and learning curve were both on the up-and-up today, all in all, a great way to end the week. and it only took two months!! :o)

i am taking karate lessons three (now 4) times a week, and they've actually come in handy already in many ways. the most obvious one is discipline of mind and body. all the running around that i do for other people during the day gets done, i retain enough energy to go and train for an hour and a half, and i sleep better than i have since i got here.

this wonderful place my sprit is in now comes on the heels of a wonderful weekend tourist/mission trip to Sand Hill mission (not a clever name, as you see from the pictures). this excursion was with my roommate Eileen, our nurse-friend, Carolyn, a Lutheran minister, John, and brother Paul, our "organist" and his traveling keyboard. we had a blast. my first trip out of georgetown in weeks, my first ride on the demerara river, and my first taste of fresh coconut water! see for yourself:




This is the gang, L-->R Brother Paul, Eileen, Carolyn and Kate, all smiling because we survived the busride out to Timheri (it was WICKED fast).











the second pic is reverend John baptizing miss shanika lakeisha (or maybe it's the other way around??) she was AMAZING - i've never seen a baby so calm, so smiling, with so much spirit and so little crying at a baptism! maybe you can see that she's reached out and grabbed a hold of his shirt in this picture ... it's tough to distinguish, but she did. it was like they were old friends.


and .... fresh from the coconut!!!!! who needs cups, really?! this is coconut water at it's freshest. doesn't really taste like coconut, or like water. kind of sweet and tangy.


the green around my shoulders? that's a sweat rag. needed that after the slow trudge up the dune in the midday heat. you can see Eileen is trying to color coordinate her cheeks to match her dress. she got pretty close that afternoon.




this is the school for the area, and the building where we actually had the service, since the old mission building is actually condemned (structurally, not by the church or a former priest or anything).



and this, you will recognize, is princess kate of the lower demarara coconut plantation (which we saw off to our right on the way up) and naturalist, sketching the groves of plants we saw and the shapes of leaves that were unique or new to me along the riverside. i am happy to report that i left this afternoon of gallavanting with NO sunburn, thanks to my silly looking umbrella on our trip up the river. it was only when they broke out the aloe vera that the others wished they had copied my style ;o)