A Poem - By Becky

F - Fresh, crisp air
A - Apple Pie
L - Leaves of red, orange, and yellow
L - Laughter

Okay, as you can tell from the poem, I successfully passed my 3rd grade English class where we learned to write these poems. Today I woke up with a desire for Fall. It´s not coming to come because I am in an endless summer. What a nightmare! Sometimes at night, I turn on my air conditioner in my room and it cools my room down from its normal 82 degrees to 74. I make it cold so that I can use my Alpaca blanket. I get to cuddle up with my blanket in my bed and have sweet dreams of Fall weather.
I think life is better in the Fall. I think it´s the coziest time of year. Summer makes every one spread out and leave on vacations and trips. Fall brings everyone back together under the same roof. It´s exciting when the leaves start changing colors and the wind brings this crisp freshness. It´s the smell of homemade apple die and dehydrated fruits. It´s putting on a sweater for the first time and finding the socks again after a long hot summer. Halloween parties, games, and laughter. Cute little kids in costumes. Raking up the crunchy leaves and then jumping in them. Flirting with the new crush in the ward or in your class (this is for us singles...). New roommates and friends. The excitement of football games at BYU or beautiful Fall hikes on a Saturday afternoon. Of course I love Fall! Since I missed this Fall, next year I get to enjoy it twice as much. That´ll be out of control.
Climatic Differences: This week we taught our workshop at in Huancavilco. We jammed 35 people into a smaller sized room that was already at 85 degrees. Even with the fans on, it was still 85 degrees. The interesting thing is that when people are used to never having a-c or being in rooms with fans, they get cold really fast. Even if there is air conditioning, within 10 minutes someone will ask us to turn it off because they are cold. The second day, people come wearing sweaters. I always laugh and wonder how someone can wear a sweater when it´s 85 in the classroom, but somehow they get cold.
Men: In Provo, sometimes when I´d go running down University, I´d get a few silly boys that yelled cat calls out of the window or honked their horns. I would snicker and move on with life. in the 20 walk from our apartment to the Employment Center, things often get out of control! From the second we step out of our apartment, the comments begin. Sometimes the comments are accompanied by whistles, creepy looks, honking the horns in the car (which is another issue). Unfortunately, we have to walk by this large construction site every day, yesterday I think there were about 20 guys on the corner...working, but they all stopped, every last one as we walked by. I tried to roll my eyes and ignore them, but I really wanted to laugh because it was out of control. Luckily, right after we walked by, the boss noticed that they´d stopped working and reprimanded them, and told them to get back to work. I´m going to feel so unpopular in the US after being so harassed here on a daily basis, haha.
Driving: I feel like I´ve gotten used to the crazy Guayaquil driving habits. The first few days and weeks I feared for my life - every time I got in a car or crossed the street. The concept of lanes in Guayaquil doesn´t exist. If there are 2 lanes painted on the street, somehow it ends up being some sort of jumbled mess of 4 lanes. Blinkers - pointless! If you want to cut someone off, switch lanes, turn, randomly stop, just honk your horn and hope the people listen. There are overpasses that have been built so that they didn´t have to put up stop lights. There definitely are no car inspections - which mean that all of the cars are older and pollute the air a lot! It´s a joke to watch! I should take a video one day for your viewing pleasure. It really is astonishing. I always feel bad when I see the Driver´s Ed people out on the road in the car for the first time, that must be a horrifying experience to learn how to drive here. But, it sure is funny to watch.