This Is What We've Been Up To.

Currently Listening To: It's Time by Imagine Dragons 
A Year Ago Today: was my sister's wedding! Happy anniversary, Linnea and William!

Here are a few things we've been doing with the MK2MK kids that are particularly fun:

• Because all these kids are the children of missionaries, we did a simulation where they had to do what their parents do: raise support. Each kid was given a continent, and they had to go door to door getting people to give them a certain number points so that they could be missionaries there. I was pretty stingy with my point-giving: I told them I'm just a grad student with no income, and I only had a certain number of points to give away so I had chosen only to give to kids going to Africa because it is my favorite. Then the kids had to write support letters and thank you letters. Which might be the cutest things I've seen. (And there has basically been non-stop knocking on our door since this activity began...) 

• We took a field trip to Old Town, Fort Collins, to put our observing skills into action. All 25 of us traipsed around, making observations about the town, making assumptions based on the observations and then asking FoCo residents to validate our assumptions. We also played the pianos scattered around town (yes, FoCo is amazing), frolicked in sprinklers and had a picnic. And then we got to eat ice cream.

• To learn about observing and adapting to new cultures, we did something called "A Meal's A Meal," where we had a meal made up of five separate courses, and each course had a different "culture": different rules to follow, different ways of saying yes and no, different ways to speak. For example, during the bread stick course, you had to sit on your right hand and only use your left hand. You couldn't bite off a piece of bread stick, but had to tear it then put it in your mouth. Boys could only use the white sauce, and girls could only use the red sauce. You said yes by snapping, and no by rubbing your nose. And you had to sing everything you said. So, each course had a different set of rules like this, and when the kids came in, my co-teachers and I were already eating according to these rules, and the kids had to watch until they felt like they knew what was going on, then join in. Especially because in one of the courses you had to hang a spaghetti noodle over your ear to signal you were done, and in another, kids had to eat skittles off the floor and get approval of the Skittle color before they could swallow it. Hilarious.

And, of course, every day is full sorts of other lessons and activities, such as using play-doh to explain what a Third Culture Kid is, or doing crafts from and eating the snack of various people groups around the world. Not to mention, the kids are performing their musical this Thursday night! And I am so proud of them.

All this crazy fun busy-ness, plus a retreat in the Rockies this past weekend (what? I got to spend time with grown-ups?) is what has kept me from sharing this with y'all, but hopefully now you can get a picture the kind of things we've been doing!