"I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead. Not sick. Not wounded. Dead." - Woody Allen

I haven't been posting here at my normal daily pace. By the time I'm done for the day it's 9:30 p.m. and I'm exhausted. I get up in the morning mentally hung over, without the motivation to do much of anything until about 10 a.m. or so, and by then it's time to begin the day's assignments.

The trip is going very well, at least as far as I can tell. Puerto Ricans are lots of things, including very gracious, so if I'm a total bomb they would never say so. The sessions have been well attended and growing each night, which I take as a sign they're getting something out of them. A speaker gets pretty good at reading his crowd and they also seem fully engaged with the material.

Some other observations about Puerto Ricans:

They laugh easily and often. Compared to Gringos they seem very happy with life despite (or perhaps because of) not having nearly as much "stuff."
It's by no means a poor Commonwealth (their official designation) but aside from some very exclusive areas I saw yesterday in Ponce' life is lived on a smaller, simpler scale.
Almost to a person they have rhythm and find it impossible to stand still while they sing. And sing they do! Love it.
They sure eat a lot of rice.
They are very patient with Gringos who can't speak Spanish.

I preached Sunday morning, spoke at a seniors' gathering, talked to about 20 K-6th graders at a kids' club in the barrio, done two of my three evening seminars (2 hours each), and will speak to college kids Friday night. Guess which one of those was/will go done as the hardest.

My cabana is 100 yards from the ocean and I've been down there once, not for lack of interest. And that one time was at high tide, so my walk wasn't nearly as interesting as it could have been. I hope to get down there at low tide today.

My only sight seeing jaunts have been one up into the forest on Monday and a drive into Ponce with Pastor Miguel yesterday. I'll comment on the former in a later post. (yikes) The latter was an opportunity to talk shop while we saw some really beautiful scenery and buildings, and the talk was the best part. These trips are described as an opportunity to teach in seminars (tonight's is on leadership), but the highlight of the two I've done has been time with the host pastor talking about ministry.

It's time for me to go to Ken & Sherie's for b'fast.
Mañana?