Again it has been about a month since the last post, but maybe this time I will send out an email giving people the site. Then it would be nice to know if people are actually enjoying reading these or if it's worth it.

Anyway, it's been a low key month. We did have our first visitor, Gabe's mom Cindy, but we'd love to have more...:) Come visit us. Albuquerque is an awesome city and New Mexico is an awesome state, especially if you're from the mid west. Weather has gotten a bit cooler, but we've still got the sun and the mountains.

Our unit continues to learn to communicate better and get to know how to relate to each other. Learning components this month have been the high ropes course at our church retreat, a chile roasting party (which meant that we peal, seed, and bag them to be frozen so we have them all year round) where I learned that my hands are very sensitive to the chile and next time I must wear gloves, and visiting Tent Rocks which meant some good hiking, sweet views, and rocks that look like tents.

Gabe and I got our first weekend away, which we are given once a month. We spent it at our host family's house south of the city where they have an upstairs apartment. During the weekend we got to spend some time with the young adults from the church at a local brewery's Septemberfest and realized how much we will need that weekend away each month. We have also joined a dinner club group with the young adults and will have a meal with a group of 6 people once a week. How wonderful it is to be with people more our age.

I am still looking for a job, but finally had my subbing orientation and will hopefully be in the system in the next two weeks and Gabe's job continues to go well. Who knew he would find himself enjoying a job in a school setting?!

We would love to hear from you all and hear that you're thinking about coming for a visit!

Bethany

Participants, pears, and chicks!

So, I guess we haven't done the best job of keeping our blog up to date, since it's now almost a month since we've written anything. Our participants arrived three and a half weeks ago. Mary is from Oklahoma and working at the daycare at the church. Sam is from Goshen and working at Habitat for Humanity. Joe is from VA and working at Habitat as well. We started with a week of orientation, planned by us. That week we were very grateful that different people from the church provided supper for us every night. The participants have been working for two and a half weeks and we've had that long to get a routine of cooking and weekly learning components and worship nights. Our learning components have so far been the annual Santa Fe Indian's Market, watching the movie The Milagro Bean Field War (which takes place in Albuquerque and relates to water rights), making cookies and meeting the neighbors, an Isotopes baseball game, and canning the pears that are from a tree in our yard. Our worship night for the first while here are sharing our spiritual life journeys. This group is fun in that everyone loves to play games and we never know what Sam will do next (jump on the roof, do pull-ups on our doorway, or leave the stove on high while talking on the phone outside).

Gabe has found a job!!! He started Monday and is full time (but only working Mon-Thurs) at a private alternative school for students with special needs who haven't been able to fit in the public school system. There are 24 students, ranging from 1st to 12th grade, but mostly middle school age. I have still not found a job, but filling in as an administrator at the daycare at the church until something else comes up or the director finds a replacement for that position. I've been having a really hard time getting into the public school's subbing program since it's so big. I've also applied for a few part time special ed. positions, but schools are really looking for people who are bilingual (oh, how I wish I would have expanded my spanish since SST).

Our resent excitement has been the four chicks we got about a week ago. They were about a week old at the time and are so cute! Gabe spent most of last week building a coop for them.

Hopefully the next post won't be so long in between. We miss and love you all!

Bethany