After spending two days in Santa Cruz trying to figure out visa stuff, Kimberly and I finally went to a different airport to be taken to Rurenabaque, the small town next to Familia Feliz. There wasn’t any screening for our bags and I was able to bring a full water bottle with me on the plane. However, once we got out of the airport and onto the tarmac, one of the airport security guys had us lay out our suitcases then brought a K-9 dog over to smell our bags. I’m guessing they were looking for drugs but since we didn’t have any besides a pack of Dayquil and Tylenol, they let us go. Kimberly and I followed the pilot behind several small planes until we arrived at the smallest plane I had ever seen. It seated four but since we had so much luggage and four boxes of fans that our director had bought, there were three seats with luggage up to the ceiling. I was a little shorter than the plane which says something for how small it was since I’m kind of super short.
I sat in the back surrounded by boxes, with my backpack on my lap, Kim sat in front with the pilot, we prayed together (Trust me, I was praying most of the way there anyway), and then we took off. The pilot had said there would be quite a bit of turbulence because the wind was so strong but what’s a little turbulence, right? Let me tell you, this turbulence was nothing like I’d ever experienced before. If you’ve ever been on the roller coaster ride Thunder Mountain at Disney land, it was a lot like that. We made all sorts of twists, turns and dips until I decided that it had been a good experience so far but that it was probably going to end with the engine dying and us plummeting to the earth. Thankfully, that’s not how it ended. Once we got above the clouds, we evened out and flew like a normal airplane would. The ride was so smooth, the pilot even had time to eat lunch and read a book as we flew. (I’m guessing we were on autopilot. Is that a thing?) All to say that God brought us safely to Rurre so that we could finally get to Familia Feliz.

During student missions class, so many people told me to go without any expectations. That’s super hard to do, turns out but I was able to at least not have any expectations about the location or what the place looks like. There are inside showers and that makes me very happy. I was placed in La Casa de Frutas, which translates as the fruit house. That name in itself cracks me up. There’s the vegetable house, the dried fruit house, the bean house, the flower house and Miguel’s house. My house is above the kitchen and cafeteria which I am one thousand times grateful for because that means there’s less chance of a snake coming into my house. As of right now (Although it could change) I have Kimberly living with me in one room. We’re both house moms together but it’s fantastic because she’s already fluent in Spanish so if I’m really struggling to understand what one of my thirteen girls is trying to say (Which happens all the time since their accents are very different from Spain accents), I can get Kimberly to help me out. So yes, thirteen girls are in my house. Currently, I only know five of their names. Hopefully I’ll learn them all fast but they’re very different and hard for me to remember.
Another interesting thing about our house is that if you go to use the bathroom, you can’t leave the bathroom unless you use the kitchen knife that’s laying in the bathroom sink, stick it in the hole in the door where the door handle should be and twist it so that the door pops open. I learned that the hard way after I was stuck in the bathroom for three minutes my first night trying to figure out how to open a locked door that doesn’t have a door handle.

Tomorrow I'll start teaching school. I'm not 100% sure what I'll be teaching yet but it'll be an adventure for sure. 

I still feel a little disoriented but I've been told by the other three Sm's who have been here a month that I'll get use to the run of things in a couple weeks.