photos!!! (I hope =))

Happy Saturday, all! Today is just packed - after fiddling at the computer for a while in a desparate attempt to share with you some photos, I'm going to the newly remodeled Denver Art Museum with some housemates, since today is a FREE day! Living on a 75$/month stipend gives a certain extra sheen to the word 'free' =) After that, we're going to a downtown festival that's happening all Labor Day weekend - it's called 'Taste of Colorado' and features tons of local restaurants and artisans, along with games and rides.

Below, I put a link to the Kodak Photo Gallery where I put some photos of my time here so far. I took a bunch this morning to show you, but I couldn't figure out how to upload them, so for now these are shared photos from friends. I hope you can access the link! Here it is: http://www.kodakgallery.com/MyGallery.jsp?& Be warned - the pictures are fairly blurry. Sorry! I'm still working out the kinks of the best way to post photos. There are a few that are clear, and you can see my housemates, where we live, where we were in the mountains for our opening retreat, and some views of Denver.

ESL class was fabulous on Thursday - I have 8 students currently, all from Mexico, 2 men and 6 women. They are such a fun bunch, eager to learn and laugh and ask all kinds of questions about the mysterious English language. We talked about letters, numbers, the verb 'to be' and other sundry items.

Also, yesterday (Friday) since my agency isn't open, I rode with Betsy to the Broadway Assistance Center, a food bank that gives out foods of all sorts on Mondays and Fridays. After sorting through racks and racks of breads to weed out the moldy or stale ones, I took my station at the vegetable table, and handed out fresh veggies to customers. The pace was fast and non-stop, and I got satisfyingly dirty handling all the food. It was such a great change from the rest of my week, which still consisted mainly of daydreaming about what I could do in the weeks to come and trying to set up some concrete activites to do. It looks likely that I'll be able to tutor pretty consistently in the mornings at the local elementary school, working with the 5th grade class on math and social studies.

Yesterday afternoon I went to Annunciation school to help with their afterschool program. Before it started, I was making some copies for the social worker and guess whose photo was above the copy machine?? Our dear Virgen of Guadalupe! (Read the old post entitled 'Our Lady of the Copier' to understand the irony =)) The afterschool program was fun, I played chess with a few middle schoolers and appreciated afresh the energy and wackiness of elementary school students.

One more thing (so much news today!) - I'm going to be co-teaching a confirmation class at Annunciation parish with Franciscan Brother Joe. It starts next Sunday, so we have a week to prepare. I'm so excited for this, our class is 13-16 year olds who have had one year of confirmation training so far and will be confirmed this Easter. Please pray for us as we prepare to teach these students about their faith!