(Click the picture to see our other pictures from our trip) We got back last night from a 5-day trip to the coast. We went to discuss plans for the Bible Institute that we are helping to start. The second session of IBEM (Instituto Biblico de Entrenamiento Misionero) will be held in Trujillo in July. We looked at possible locations and talked about the website. Guess who the website's author is... drumroll... me. I feel so pleased. I asked a guy there how much he would typically charge for designing and writing a website, you know what he said?! ...around $200. So I figure my work IS worth something! My apologies to those of you who read our blog, that I haven't been posting in real time... you see, there is no such thing as wireless internet that you might log in to at Panera or your local library or whatever other wonderful place in the States that has wireless access for FREE. Matter of fact, in our hotel, they charge by the 1/4 hour for internet access. So, I was only able to read the most urgent e-mails. That's okay. We had a nice break from the norm. Speaking of Panera, anyone out there want to send me a cinnamon crunch bagel with hazelnut cream cheese? And, while you're at it, go ahead and send a Bare Burrito from Baja Fresh too - with extra red salsa! I'm drooling thinking of these places! Okay, so back to the stats of this last week: We stayed in an awesome hotel about 15min away. We kept up on school.... sort of. The kids did manage to get some math done each day, we read our AO readings for week (wk.8 of Y1 in 18 weeks). And they did a WHOLE BUNCH of nature study stuff. We found a crab and kept him prisoner for the week (very interesting), we saw lots of birds (I can't name any of them except one of them was a hummingbird of some sort - I'm new to this nature study stuff.), and the kids drew quite a few pages in their nature sketch books. FUN. There he/she is! What a beauty... LooneyTune's rendition of our friend crab And GuerillaGuy's version. Observation in action of a drowning cricket found in the pool - they fished it out themselves! This trip was so busy of a time. When we weren't in meetings or driving around looking at possible locations or whatever, we did manage to have quite a bit of fun. But, it is a 6 hour drive both ways, and one day while we were there, we were all in the car for 5 hours! So we're all glad to be back even if we ALL do miss the sunshine! We live at 2,750m above sea level in the Andes mountains, so although it isn't freezing, it definitely isn't sultry either. But we LOVE the green of the mountains! -Amy