Molly time

This week we inherited a dog. She's initially a cute, fluffy, floppy puppy that melts the heart, but after about 2 seconds of that she turns into a urine machine. When she goes, she goes A LOT. Luckily, we're giving her back on Friday — this was only a short-term dog-sitting gig.

Her name is Molly and she belongs to a co-teacher and the D.O.S (who are dating). Because she's only two months old, her fur still has that fuzzy baby-soft texture. Oh, and she has perfect begging eyes, which makes it extremely hard to say no to her or kick her off our bed. However, within the first 5 hours of watching her (I kid you not), she had peed through both our duvet covers, our quilt, our sheets, and six times on our floor. Finally, I sent Ryan out to walk her while I did 4 loads of laundry (our washing machine is very small), mopped the entire apartment, and barricaded our bed with chairs. When she came back an hour later, she was so excited she beelined it for the bed, hit a chair on her floppy ascent, crashed onto our mattress, got scared and peed. We almost cried. Thankfully, things have gotten better since that first sleepless night, and we managed to get six hours last night before she woke us up wanting to play. For anyone who might be wondering... no, Ryan will NOT be getting a dog for Christmas (I briefly considered surprising him, but now I think we both know it's not a good decision).

Molly is so cute though, and I'll have to post some pictures of her. Unfortunately, my computer is not connecting to the internet (I'm using Ryan's) and all the pictures are on mine, so this post won't have pictures. I'll try again tomorrow though.

Tuesday, we went on a long walk with Molly and a girl we met at another English school here. It turns out she's from New Mexico too! Her home in Rio Rancho is probably only 30 minutes away from my parent's home and only about 45-60 minutes away from the Bell's ranch. I've been humming 'It's a small world' all week long and craving carmel corn from Disneyland. Anyways, her name is Megan and she is super sweet. Her dad is a pastor at a Church in Rio Rancho, so yesterday we had our first Church service of three! It was so fantastic... Ryan and I have someone else in our immediate vicinity that will fellowship with us on a daily/weekly basis. While we aren't saying we can't function without a group of friends whose morality aligns with ours, it is always comforting and encouraging to find those kindred spirits in life who share/understand your worldview. Plus, Megan has a puppy who is also trying to work the wiggles out of cute Molly.

I took lots of pictures of our school last week, so I'll have to upload those in our next blog. The administration team spent hours decorating for Christmas, so now the school looks festive and Christmasy :-) It reminds us a little of home & I've practically memorized the entire Michael Buble Christmas CD. Speaking of Christmas... leave a comment and let us know your favorite Christmas song! Mine is probably Oh Holy Night, Silent Night, and Carol of the Bells. Ryan's favorite is Little Drummer Boy.

We are enjoying life, exploring, and seeing the city sites. Our only immediate needs are prayer for my health and that Ryan's immune system stays strong. I caught a cold about 3 weeks ago (right after we got here) and it developed into something more serious when I lost my voice and now have bronchitis. I've used up the day-time cold medicine I brought and got some Chinese cough medicine last week. Now I'm out of both and still have a deep cough that hurts. I'm bundling up really warm, and hopefully this thing is getting better, but if you can keep me in your thoughts/prayers that would be great! Other than that, everything is going really well. We miss all of you of course, but we know that we have FABULOUS family and friends, and you are living/loving to the fullest. We wish we could give you all a hug... just pretend we did :-) Love you lots!