So I've been doing more thinking the past few days than anything else. Saturday I decided to go on the Hop on Hop off bus. Not exactly that exciting. I'd been to the places that it took me to already and they really didn't have much to say about anything. I was kind of assuming there would be more to see since we are in the biggest city in the world (some say... depending on what you're counting I guess), but if there is, the tour didn't show it. As I was sitting on the bus all by myself (I took the bus so at least there would be people around), I kept comparing that tour to the Hop on/ off bus in NYC. It's the only one I'd been on before. In doing that it hit me all over again just how poor they are here. The quality of living... the expected house/ apartment... the norm of how people make money by selling whatever they get their hands on... it's so much lower than in the US. I wish you could just see it and spring over here for a day just to look around and get a glimpse. It's not that the normal person is starving, just that the norm is so much lower on the scale. They have what they need. And their needs are defined much differently than ours. How does that happen. We expect so much.... "need" so much. And most of it is so much of a waste and unnecessary.
Another thing that has really hit me this week as I've been reading and thinking has been just how thankful that I am for hope and the hope that people can change. As these guys are coming in it's so apparent that everyone has given up on them: their family for the most part, the government, employers, the education system, even they themselves. They don't have people who love them... in fact most people are afraid of them and ignore them. But more and more I just keep thinking that still God loves them. He still created them in his image. He still is brokenhearted when he sees what has become of their lives. But there are people who are showing them love. There are a few people who have grasped what that love and hope from God means and are trying to share it with them. God is pretty much their only hope. I mean he's the only thing all of us truly have hope in, but for them especially that is an extremely obvious thing. It's easier to see in their lives how little worth our lives have on earth. Being here has made me realize that no matter how good a meal we can feed them and no matter if we can help them learn how to read, that only gets them so far. They are still left without hope if they don't have a relationship with Jesus and know that they are forgiven through his death on the cross. They might live a little bit easier and have a fuller stomach, but the love part... the part where they realize that God loves them and that they can change with his help is the most important of all and the only thing that truly matters.
Okay... on a lighter note... I'm making Macaroni and Cheese for Alex and Paty tomorrow. I'm pretty excited about it. They've been teasing me about my cooking skills since I've been here saying that that is probably why I don't have a boyfriend. I think it is their mission to find me a husband asap haha. So tomorrow, I'm going to show them how it's done in the USA (without Kraft).
This week is also the Mundialito which is the street kid Olympics. Apparently every summer all of the street kids (kids as in 15-40 yr olds) organize an olympic contest. They divide up into teams depending on where they live and this mostly revolves around which Metro stop their closest to. Then they have all kinds of events. They tell me that volleyball is included. It's 2 weeks long at the winning team in the end gets a trophy. I think it's kind of hilarious, but we're going to be there this week catching up with some of them who haven't come to the Drop In Center recently. I'm pretty excited about it. Alexandro told me that this is going to make me realize just how many street people there are in the city. Apparently they have estimated more than 3 million. That's insane if you ask me.
Well I'm off to bed. Pardon my grammar errors because I didn't read this through before posting it. We'll just hope it makes sense.
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